Emily Dickinson Lexicon
Search Wildcards
The Emily Dickinson Lexicon uses regular expressions for wildcards. The most commonly used characters are summarized below.
| \w | Represents any single word character Example: \w would match A-z |
| \W | Represents any single character that is not a word character Example: \W would match any character that wasn't A-z |
| \v | Represents any single vowel character Example: \v would match a, e, i, o, or u |
| \c | Represents any single consonant character Example: \c would match any letter character that wasn't a, e, i, o, or u |
| \d | Represents any single digit character Example: \d would match 0-9 |
| \D | Represents any single character that is not a digit character Example: \D would match anything that wasn't 0-9 |
| . | Represents any single character Example: . would match t, u, ', -, and all other characters. |
| * | The preceding character can appear 0 or more times Example: a.*or would match abhor, ancestor, anchor, and author |
| + | The preceding character can appear 1 or more times Example: t.+o would match tho, too, two, but not to |
| ? | The preceding character is optional Example: cas?t would match cat or cast |
| {n1,n2} | The preceding character must match n1-n2 times with n representing a number. n2 may be left off for an unlimited number of matches. Example: t.{2,4}d would match thread and tend but not tankard. Note: * is the same as {0,} |
| | | Or Example: job|work would match job or work |
| () | Groups search characters together. Example: (arch)?ang(el|le) would match archangel, angel, or angle |
| [] | Character class. Matches any of the characters inside of the [] Example: [cmr]at would match cat, rat, or mat. |
| [^] | Negative character class. Matches any character not inside of the [^] Example: [^cmr]at would match bat, sat, and pat but not cat, mat, or rat. |
| \ | Escape character. Search using the above characters with their non-wildcard meaning by prefacing them with \ Example: \[fig\.\] would match [fig.] |