Metacharacter	Meaning	Example
* (asterisk)	Indicates zero or more occurrences	A* matches zero or more As (no As, A, AA, AAA, and so on)
+ (plus)	Indicates one or more occurrences	A+ matches one A or more than one A (A, AAA, and so on)
? (question mark)	Indicates zero or one occurrence	A? matches an empty string ("") or A
Sample patterns    
The following table shows various text patterns and sample text that matches each pattern: 

This pattern	Matches
AB	Any string that contains AB; for example, ABA, DEABC, graphAB_one
B*	Any string that contains  0  or more Bs; for example, AC, B, BB, BBB, ABBBC, and so on
AB*C	Any string containing the pattern AC or ABC or ABBC, and so on ( 0  or more Bs)
AB+C	Any string containing the pattern ABC or ABBC or ABBBC, and so on ( 1  or more Bs)
ABB*C	Any string containing the pattern ABC or ABBC or ABBBC, and so on ( 1  B plus  0  or more Bs)
^AB	Any string starting with AB
AB?C	Any string containing the pattern AC or ABC ( 0  or  1  B)
^[ABC]	Any string starting with A, B, or C
[^ABC]	A string containing any characters other than A, B, or C
^[^abc]	A string that begins with any character except a, b, or c
^[^a-z]$	Any single-character string that is not a lowercase letter (^ and $ indicate the beginning and end of the string)
[A-Z]+	Any string with one or more uppercase letters
^[ 0 - 9 ]+$	Any string consisting only of digits
^[ 0 - 9 ][ 0 - 9 ][ 0 - 9 ]$	Any string consisting of exactly three digits
^([ 0 - 9 ][ 0 - 9 ][ 0 - 9 ])$	Any consisting of exactly three digits enclosed in parentheses

^[A-Za-zА-Яа-я]

^[A-Za-zА-Яа-я]+$

^[A-Za-z А-Яа-я]+$