VB.Net - Character Escapes

These are basically the special characters or escape characters. The backslash character (\) in a regular expression indicates that the character that follows it either is a special character or should be interpreted literally.

The following table lists the escape characters −

Escaped character	Description	Pattern	Matches
\a	Matches a bell character, \u0007.	\a	"\u0007" in "Warning!" + '\u0007'
\b	In a character class, matches a backspace, \u0008.	[\b]{3,}	"\b\b\b\b" in "\b\b\b\b"
\t	Matches a tab, \u0009.	(\w+)\t	"Name\t", "Addr\t" in "Name\tAddr\t"
\r	Matches a carriage return, \u000D. (\r is not equivalent to the newline character, \n.)	\r\n(\w+)	"\r\nHello" in "\r\Hello\nWorld."
\v	Matches a vertical tab, \u000B.	[\v]{2,}	"\v\v\v" in "\v\v\v"
\f	Matches a form feed, \u000C.	[\f]{2,}	"\f\f\f" in "\f\f\f"
\n	Matches a new line, \u000A.	\r\n(\w+)	"\r\nHello" in "\r\Hello\nWorld."
\e	Matches an escape, \u001B.	\e	"\x001B" in "\x001B"
\ nnn	Uses octal representation to specify a character (nnn consists of up to three digits).	\w\040\w	"a b", "c d" in "a bc d"
\x nn	Uses hexadecimal representation to specify a character (nn consists of exactly two digits).	\w\x20\w	"a b", "c d" in "a bc d"
\c X\c x	Matches the ASCII control character that is specified by X or x, where X or x is the letter of the control character.	\cC	"\x0003" in "\x0003" (Ctrl-C)
\u nnnn	Matches a Unicode character by using hexadecimal representation (exactly four digits, as represented by nnnn).	\w\u0020\w	"a b", "c d" in "a bc d"
\	When followed by a character that is not recognized as an escaped character, matches that character.	\d+[\+-x\]\d+\d+[\+-x\\d+	"2+2" and "39" in "(2+2) 3*9"

vb.net_regular_expressions.htm