Regular expression quick reference

. (period) - matches any single character except a newline.
* (asterisk) - matches zero or more instances of the preceding character.
+ (plus) - matches one or more instances of the preceding character.
? (question mark) - matches zero or one (but not more) instances of the preceding character.
\{n\} (backslash-braces) - matches exactly n repetitions of the preceding character.
[ ... ] (brackets) - delimit a set of possible characters.
^ (caret) - matches the beginning-of-line character.
$ (period) - matches the end-of-line character.

Examples:

1. String: {\textit et al.}
Search string: {\\textit.*}
We match the whole thing.


2. M-x replace-regexp RET c[ad]+r RET \&-safe RET
would replace (for example) `cadr' with `cadr-safe' and `cddr' with
`cddr-safe'. 


3. String: {\textit et al.}
We want: {\textit {et al.}}
Query: {\\textit\(.*\)}
Replace it with: {\\textit {\1}}
Final result: {\textit {et al.}}

4. String: cms.vuint32( 10, 10, 10, 10 )   [many different instances of this]
We want: cms.vuint32( 10, 10, 10, 10, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 )
Query: cms.vuint32(\(.*\))
Replace it with: cms.vuint32(\1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
Final result: cms.vuint32( 10, 10, 10, 10 , 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)