Regular expression syntax in Internet Service Monitoring

Regular expressions perform string matching on content downloaded during service tests. These expressions may contain one or more regular expression operators, which determine what content is matched by the expression.

Note: Regular expression syntax can be used to match strings on single lines only. Internet Service Monitoring cannot match strings which include new lines or carriage returns. Use multiple regular expressions to match strings which cover multiple lines. You can also use SLC rules to raise alarms based on the result of multiple regular expressions.

Table 1. Regular expression operators
Character	Description
`.`	Matches any single character. For example the regular expression `r.t` matches the strings `rat`, `rut`, `r t`, but not `root`.
`$`	Matches the end of a line. For example, the regular expression `dog$` matches the end of the string `it's a dog` but not the string `There are a lot of dogs`.
`^`	Matches the beginning of a line. For example, the regular expression `^When in` matches the beginning of the string `When in the course of human events` but would not match `What and When in the`.
`*`	Matches zero or more occurrences of the character immediately preceding. For example, the regular expression `.*` matches any number of any characters.
`\`	Treats the subsequent character as an ordinary character. For example, `\$` matches the dollar sign character (`$`) rather than the end of a line. Similarly, the expression `\.` matches the period character rather than any single character.
`[]`	Matches any one of the characters between the brackets. For example, the regular expression `r[aou]t` matches `rat`, `rot`, and `rut`, but not `rit`. Specify ranges of characters by using a hyphen. For example, the regular expression `[0-9]` matches any digit. You can also specify multiple ranges. For example, the regular expression `[A-Za-z]` matches any upper or lower case letter.
`\|`	Matches phrases containing either of the conditions specified. For example `him\|her` matches the line `it belongs to him` and the line `it belongs to her`, but does not match the line `it belongs to them`.