How to escape backslashes

Don't miss how easy it is to escape backward slashes when running a regular expression search.

Simply use two backslashes in a row, since a backslash is used to escape other characters used in the Regex syntax.

Regex to find social security numbers

You can use this long regular expression (posted here by Niket Pathak):

((?!219-09-9999|078-05-1120)(?!666|000|9\d{2})\d{3}-(?!00)\d{2}-(?!0{4})\d{4})|((?!219 09 9999|078 05 1120)(?!666|000|9\d{2})\d{3} (?!00)\d{2} (?!0{4})\d{4})|((?!219099999|078051120)(?!666|000|9\d{2})\d{3}(?!00)\d{2}(?!0{4})\d{4})$

. . . to successfully find social security numbers in a text sample. Take off the caret ^ so that you can find SSNs which don't start at the beginning of a new line.

As always, tested and confirmed to work tonight.

RegEx to find file names

You can use this regular expression search to find file names with a three character extension:

^[\w,\s-]+\.[A-Za-z]{3}$

Change the number indicated in curly brackets at the end to account for longer extensions.

^[\w,\s-]+\.[A-Za-z]{4}$