Regular expression reference

In auto-redaction, you can supply a single word or regular expression (regex) that Epiq Discovery matches and automatically redacts in the selected document images. A regex provides a pattern to match instead of matching a literal word. For example, the following RegEx finds email addresses from a specific company (name@epiqglobal.com).

Example: \w+@epiqglobal.com

To find an email address that begins with firstname.lastname, use the following example. This example specifies the following pattern: first name with any number of characters, a literal period (.), last name with any number of characters, a literal at symbol (@), any number of characters, another literal period (.), and three characters at the end.

Example: \w+\.\w+@\w+\.\w{3}

Use the regex elements in the following table to construct patterns for auto-redaction.

String	Matches text that contains	Example	Possible results
a literal word	the supplied single word. Use alone or combine with other elements.	Private (HR) department	Private HR department
Metacharacter	Matches text that contains	Example	Possible results
.	an alphabetic character, number, or symbol.	a.z loc....n	a_z location
\d	a number from 0 to 9.	\d \d{5}(-\d{4})	7 66213 (zip codes)
\D	a character that is not a number.	\D\D\D \D	AbC %
\w	a number, letter, or underscore.	invoice \w-\w\w\w \w\w\w\w	invoice A-5_1 D234
\W	a symbol, but not a letter or number.	\W \W\W\W	$ *-+=
\s	a white space character, like tab, space, or carriage return.	a\sb\sc	a b c
\S	a character that is not a white space character (tab, space, or carriage return).	\S\S\S	you
\ and a symbol	a literal Regular Expression reserved character, such as: \ . { } + ( ) * ? [ ] ^ $ |. Precede the reserved character with a backslash as the escape character.	a\.c \.\*\?	a.c .*?
Quantifier	Matches text that contains	Example	Possible results
*	the preceding character, 0 or more times.	a*b*c* misspell*	aaacccc misspel or misspelll
+	the preceding character, 1 or more times.	at+orney \d+\.\d\d	attorney 10.00 (two digit, two decimal number)
?	the preceding character, either 0 or 1 times.	plurals? honou?r	plurals or plural honor or honour
{n}	the preceding character or group for the specified number (n) of times.	a{3} \d{5}	aaa 66213
{n,}	the preceding character or group the specified number (n) of times or more.	A{3,}	AAAAAA
{n,m}	the preceding character or group the specified number (n) of times, but not more than the maximum (m) times.	\d{2,4}	19, 198, or 1984
OR	Matches text that contains	Example	Possible results
|	text on either side of the pipe symbol, which behaves similar to an OR operand.	22|33 trade(off|in)	22 or 33 tradeoff or tradein
Group/Choice	Matches text that contains	Example	Possible results
[ ... ]	a character or number listed in the brackets.	[ABC] [123]	A, B, or C 1, 2, or 3
[n - x]	a character or number in the supplied range, regardless of order. No more than one match can occur.	[a-z] \+[0-9]{11}	b +14528281111
[^n]	any character or number other than those listed.	[^a] [^a-y]	b z
( )	all of the supplied characters or numbers.	a(dmit) ..(465)	admit br465
Boundary	Matches non-printable characters	Example	Possible results
^	at the beginning of the extracted text when used outside of square brackets.	^abc	abc (at the start)
$	at the end of the extracted text.	end$	end (at the end)