Supported Expressions for Search Parameters

Regular expressions are text strings that you use to describe search patterns. You can use the following special characters to define regular expressions for search parameters.

Special character	Purpose	Example	Meaning
()	Defines the scope and precedence of the operator	gr(a\|e)y	Matches “gray” or “grey”.
\|	Matches either the regular expression before or after the vertical bar	a\|c	Matches “a” or “c”
.	Matches any single character	.at	Matches any text string ending with “at”, such as “hat”, “cat”, and “bat”.
*	Matches the previous regular expression zero or more times	a*bc	Matches zero or multiple occurrences of “a” followed by “bc”, such as “bc”, “abc”, “aabc”, “aaabc”, and so on.
+	Matches the previous regular expression one or more times	a+bc	Matches one or more occurrences of “a”, followed by “bc”, such as “abc”, “aabc”, “aaabc”, and so on.
?	Matches the previous regular expression zero or one time	a?bc	Matches zero or one occurrence of “a”, followed by “bc”, such as “bc” or “abc”.
^	Matches the beginning of a text string	^c	Matches any string beginning with “c”, such as “cat”.
$	Matches the end of a text string	com$	Matches any string ending with “com”, such as “Infoblox.com”.
[ ]	Matches any character specified in the brackets	[03] [abcd] [15a-d]	Matches “0” or “3”. Matches “a”, “b”, “c”, or “d”. Matches “1”, “5”, “a”, “b”, “c”, or “d”.
[ n-n]	Matches single characters contained in the specified range, including the start and end points	[0-3] [a-f]	Matches 0, 1, 2, and 3. Matches a, b, c, d, e, and f.
\{m,n\}	Matches the preceding expression at least m but not more than n times.	a\{3,5\}	Matches “aaa”, “aaaa”, and “aaaaa”.

Note

You can change a special character—such as the period ( . ), asterisk ( * ), plus sign ( + ), or question mark ( ? )—
into a literal character by prefixing it with a backslash ( \ ). For example, to specify a literal period, asterisk,
plus sign, or question mark, use the characters within the following parentheses: ( \. ) , ( \* ), ( \+ ), ( \? ), ( \^ ),
( \$ ).