The Backslash Character and Special Expressions (GNU Grep 3.7)
From Get docs
Grep/docs/latest/The-Backslash-Character-and-Special-Expressions
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3.3 The Backslash Character and Special Expressions
The ‘\’ character followed by a special character is a regular expression that matches the special character. The ‘\’ character, when followed by certain ordinary characters, takes a special meaning:
- ‘
\b’ - Match the empty string at the edge of a word.
- ‘
\B’ - Match the empty string provided it’s not at the edge of a word.
- ‘
\<’ - Match the empty string at the beginning of a word.
- ‘
\>’ - Match the empty string at the end of a word.
- ‘
\w’ - Match word constituent, it is a synonym for ‘
[_[:alnum:]]’. - ‘
\W’ - Match non-word constituent, it is a synonym for ‘
[^_[:alnum:]]’. - ‘
\s’ - Match whitespace, it is a synonym for ‘
Grep/docs/latest/:space:’. - ‘
\S’ - Match non-whitespace, it is a synonym for ‘
[^[:space:]]’.
For example, ‘\brat\b’ matches the separate word ‘rat’, ‘\Brat\B’ matches ‘crate’ but not ‘furry rat’.
