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I've seen some regular expressions (regex) using \s when they want to match a space, but I noticed that it also matches line breaks. Example: the regex [a-z]\s[0-9] (lowercase ASCII letter, follow...
#2: Post edited
by
Alexei
·
2021-09-17T14:47:48Z (about 3 years ago)
added relevant tag
#1: Initial revision
by
hkotsubo
·
2021-06-07T13:26:36Z (over 3 years ago)
What does the "\s" shorthand match?
I've seen some regular expressions (regex) using `\s` when they want to match a space, but I noticed that it also matches line breaks. Example: the regex `[a-z]\s[0-9]` (lowercase ASCII letter, followed by `\s`, followed by a digit) matches both `a 1` and ```none b 2 ``` Because `\s` matches either a space or a newline (see this regex running [here](https://regex101.com/r/5ZS2vX/1/)). But I also noticed that, depending on the programming language I use and/or specific settings on their regex API, it may or may not match some other "Unicode spaces", such as the [No-Break Space](https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/A0/index.htm). Hence, the question: what does the `\s` shorthand actually match? Does it depend on the language, or there are any other factors that can change its behaviour? Can I always assume that at least spaces and newlines (or any other fixed set of characters) will be matched?