add Using regular expressions

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Dietmar Maurer 2018-01-11 11:47:41 +01:00
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commit 99fd4bd402

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@ -233,3 +233,47 @@ them of one or more time-frame items.
The default ruleset defines 'Office Hours', but this is not used by The default ruleset defines 'Office Hours', but this is not used by
the default rules. the default rules.
Using regular expressions
-------------------------
A regular expression is a string of characters which tells us which
string you are looking for. The following is a short introduction in
the syntax of regular expressions used by some objects. If you are
familiar with Perl, you already know the syntax.
Simple regular expressions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In its simplest form, a regular expression is just a word or phrase to
search for. `Mail` would match the string "Mail". The search is case
sensitive so "MAIL", "Mail", "mail" would not be matched.
Metacharacters
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some characters have a special meaning. These characters are called
metacharacters. The Period (`.`) is a commonly used metacharacter. It
matches exactly one character, regardless of what the character is.
`e.mail` would match either "e-mail" or "e-mail" or "e2mail" but not
"e-some-mail".
The question mark (`?`) indicates that the character immediately
preceding it either zero or one time. `e?mail` would match
either "email" or "mail" but not "e-mail".
Another metacharacter is the star (`*`). This indicates that the
character immediately to its left may repeated any number of times,
including zero. `e*mail` would match either "email" or "mail" or
"eeemail".
The plus (`+`) metacharacter does the same as the star (*) excluding
zero. So `e+mail` does not match "mail".
Metacharacters may be combined. A common combination includes the
period and star metacharacters (`.*`), with the star immediately following
the period. This is used to match an arbitrary string of any length,
including the null string. For example: `.*company.*` matches
"company@domain.com" or "company@domain.co.uk" or
"department.company@domain.com".