Regular Expression Meta-character Alternation "|"

What is regular expression meta-character Alternation "|"?

Explanation

/prob|n|r|l|ate/
In Regular Expression, the meta-character alternation "|" or pipe is used to match character seperated with it from left to right, it just like a "OR" operator.

PHP Example:


<?php
$name = "bit";
if (preg_match("/c(a|i|u)t/", $name))
{echo "Regex Pattern matches!";}
else
{echo "Regex Pattern not matched!";}
?>
Result :

The Regex Pattern not matched!

In the above example "aiu" is similar to "a|i|u", so the possible matches would be "cat","cit","cut", since the string is "b" its unmatched.

Perl Example:


#! C:programfilesperlbinperl
print "content-type: text/htmlnn";
if ("AS235452" =~ m/([a-z]{2}|[0-9]{5})/)
{print "The Regex pattern matched.!n";}
else
{print "The Regex pattern not found!n";}
Result :

The pattern matched.!

In the above example's the pattern "([A-Z]{2}|[0-9]{5})" matches a string only if it has "5" numbers or "2" uppercase alphabets.But the string "AS235452" has only two upper case letters and since "|" is used the second condition is is matched that is for "5" numbers.


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