Regular Expression (Concept)

Regular expression (regex) is a way of finding information in a block of text. Using a standard syntax, a sequential line of characters is written to match a line of characters in the text. This line of characters written to match text is called a "pattern" and can potentially return multiple lines of text, not just one value. This syntax can be used to match very specific strings of characters or written more generally to match several permutations of the pattern. For example, one can write a regular expression pattern to match a specific date or any date in a text block.