Regular expression syntax

A regular expression is a way to match patterns in data using placeholder characters, called operators.

Elasticsearch supports regular expressions in the following queries:

• regexp
• query_string

Elasticsearch uses Apache Lucene's regular expression engine to parse these queries.

Lucene’s regular expression engine supports all Unicode characters. However, the following characters are reserved as operators:

. ? + * | { } [ ] ( ) " \
		

Depending on the optional operators enabled, the following characters may also be reserved:

# @ & < >  ~
		

To use one of these characters literally, escape it with a preceding backslash or surround it with double quotes. For example:

\@
\\
"[email protected]"
		

1. renders as a literal '@'
2. renders as a literal '\'
3. renders as '[email protected]'

				PUT my-index-000001/_doc/1
					{
  "my_field": "a\\b"
}
		

				GET my-index-000001/_search
					{
  "query": {
    "regexp": {
      "my_field.keyword": "a\\\\.*"
    }
  }
}
		

Lucene’s regular expression engine does not use the Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) library, but it does support the following standard operators.

.

Matches any character. For example:

ab.
		

1. matches 'aba', 'abb', 'abz', etc.

?

Repeat the preceding character zero or one times. Often used to make the preceding character optional. For example:

abc?
		

1. matches 'ab' and 'abc'

+

Repeat the preceding character one or more times. For example:

ab+
		

1. matches 'ab', 'abb', 'abbb', etc.

*

Repeat the preceding character zero or more times. For example:

ab*
		

1. matches 'a', 'ab', 'abb', 'abbb', etc.

{}

Minimum and maximum number of times the preceding character can repeat. For example:

a{{2}}
a{2,4}
a{2,}
		

1. matches 'aa'
2. matches 'aa', 'aaa', and 'aaaa'
3. matches 'a` repeated two or more times

|

OR operator. The match will succeed if the longest pattern on either the left side OR the right side matches. For example:

abc|xyz
		

1. matches 'abc' and 'xyz'

( … )

Forms a group. You can use a group to treat part of the expression as a single character. For example:

abc(def)?
		

1. matches 'abc' and 'abcdef' but not 'abcd'

[ … ]

Match one of the characters in the brackets. For example:

[abc]
		

1. matches 'a', 'b', 'c'

Inside the brackets, - indicates a range unless - is the first character or escaped. For example:

[a-c]
[-abc]
[abc\-]
		

1. matches 'a', 'b', or 'c'
2. '-' is first character. Matches '-', 'a', 'b', or 'c'
3. Escapes '-'. Matches 'a', 'b', 'c', or '-'

A ^ before a character in the brackets negates the character or range. For example:

[^abc]
[^a-c]
[^-abc]
[^abc\-]
		

1. matches any character except 'a', 'b', or 'c'
2. matches any character except 'a', 'b', or 'c'
3. matches any character except '-', 'a', 'b', or 'c'
4. matches any character except 'a', 'b', 'c', or '-'

You can use the flags parameter to enable more optional operators for Lucene’s regular expression engine.

To enable multiple operators, use a | separator. For example, a flags value of COMPLEMENT|INTERVAL enables the COMPLEMENT and INTERVAL operators.

ALL (Default)

Enables all optional operators.

"" (empty string)

Alias for the ALL value.

COMPLEMENT

Enables the ~ operator. You can use ~ to negate the shortest following pattern. For example:

a~bc
		

1. matches 'adc' and 'aec' but not 'abc'

EMPTY

Enables the # (empty language) operator. The # operator doesn’t match any string, not even an empty string.

If you create regular expressions by programmatically combining values, you can pass # to specify "no string." This lets you avoid accidentally matching empty strings or other unwanted strings. For example:

#|abc
		

1. matches 'abc' but nothing else, not even an empty string

INTERVAL

Enables the <> operators. You can use <> to match a numeric range. For example:

foo<1-100>
foo<01-100>
		

1. matches 'foo1', 'foo2' ... 'foo99', 'foo100'
2. matches 'foo01', 'foo02' ... 'foo99', 'foo100'

INTERSECTION

Enables the & operator, which acts as an AND operator. The match will succeed if patterns on both the left side AND the right side matches. For example:

aaa.+&.+bbb
		

1. matches 'aaabbb'

ANYSTRING

Enables the @ operator. You can use @ to match any entire string.

You can combine the @ operator with & and ~ operators to create an "everything except" logic. For example:

@&~(abc.+)
		

1. matches everything except terms beginning with 'abc'

NONE

Disables all optional operators.

Lucene’s regular expression engine does not support anchor operators, such as ^ (beginning of line) or $ (end of line). To match a term, the regular expression must match the entire string.