| Symbol | Character | Meaning | 
| ^ | Caret | Matches the beginning of the input string. When used at the beginning of a string of characters, it negates a pattern match. | 
| $ | Dollar sign | Matches the end of the input string. | 
| . | Period | Matches a single character (including white spaces). | 
| * | Asterisk | Matches none or more sequences of a pattern. | 
| + | Plus sign | Matches one or more sequences of a pattern. | 
| ? | Question mark | Matches none or one occurrence of a pattern. | 
| _ | Underscore | Matches spaces, commas, braces, parenthesis, or the beginning and end of an input string. | 
| [] | Brackets | A range of single-characters. | 
| - | Hyphen | Separates the end points of a range. |