Rockwell Automation 2755 AdaptaScan Software - Manual (Page 203)

Metacharacters C–3
Logical Operators and Other Special Functions
Character Description and Use
[ ] Square brackets ( [ ] ) instructs the rule to match an incoming string if any
character enclosed within the brackets appears in the string. A range of
values can be represented within the brackets by separating the first and
last characters in the range by a hyphen. Square brackets must be used
in pairs.
Note: The circumflex ( ^ ) can be used as the first character within the
square brackets to reverse the sense of the expression.
Examples
[ABC] Matches “A”, “B”, or “C”
[L–P] Matches “L”, “M”, “N”, “O”, or “P”
[0 – 9] Matches “0”, “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”, “5”, “6”, “7”, “8”, or “9”
[^A – Z] Matches any character that is not upper case
alphabetic
( ) Parentheses can be used in two different ways. They can be used in
search patterns to group characters and metacharacters to form
expressions. Parentheses must be used in pairs.
Examples
(AB)+ The plus sign applies to the expression (AB).
Strings that would match this expression include:
“AB”, “ABAB”, “123AB”, and “AB123”.
Parentheses can also be used to identify strings for use in the Pass/Fail
Replacement String fields. If a character, string, or expression is
surrounded by parentheses in a search pattern, then it can be later
recalled in a replace pattern with the “\n” metacharacter described
elsewhere in this chapter.
Note: Parentheses may be nested to form complex expressions.
| A vertical bar (the shifted “\” character on the keyboard) instructs the rule
to match an incoming string if the character or expression on the left or
right of the vertical bar appears in the string.
Examples
A | B Matches “A” or “B”
abc|123 Matches “abc” or “123”
\ The backslash indicates that the following character, which would
normally be interpreted as a metacharacter, should instead be
interpreted as a literal ASCII character.
Example
\. The period ( . ) will be interpreted as a period
rather than a single character wildcard.