The following expressions are not the same: /[.]*/ and /.*/. Why is that, and how exactly are they different? What is the interaction between the [] and special characters in regular expressions?

Thank you.

The following expressions are not the same: /[.]*/ and /.*/. Why is that, and how exactly are they different? What is the interaction between the [] and special characters in regular expressions?

Thank you.

• javascript
• regex

• 3 BTW, the "proper" way to escape special characters is with the backslash, so /[.]*/ would be /\.*/. – Matthew Crumley Commented Oct 31, 2011 at 16:49

2 Answers 2

The dot . is normally a wildcard, matching any character. Within a character class (the []) however, it is treated as a literal and only matches a dot.

• .* literally means "Match zero or more of any character", wherein the . acts as a wildcard.
• [.]* literally means "Match zero or more dot . characters", wherein the . enclosed in a character class [] is matched literally.