axxb the pattern matches an followed by almost any single character followed by exceptionthe one character not matched by the dot is the newline character if you need that to be matchedtooput ? at the start of your pattern matching multiple copies of something here is an example where we match an followed by one or more 'sre sub( 'ab''''abc abbbbbbc ac* * ac we use the character to indicate that we want to match one or more ' here there are similar things we can use to specify different numbers of ' here for instanceusing in place of will match zero or more ' (this means that ac in the example above would be replaced by * because counts as an followed by zero ' here is table of what you can docode description match or more occurrences match or more occurrences match or occurrence {mmatch exactly occurrences { ,nmatch between and occurrencesinclusive here is an example that matches an followed by three to six 'sre sub( 'ab{ , ''''abb abbb abbbb abbbbbbbbb ''abb *bbbherewe do not match abb because the is only followed by two ' the next two pieces get matchedas the is followed by three ' in the second termand four ' in the third in the last piecethere is an followed by nine ' what gets matched isthe along with the first six ' note that the matching in the last piece above is greedythat isit takes as many ' as it is allowed it is allowed to take between three and six 'sand it takes all six to get the opposite behaviorto get it take as few ' as allowedadd ?like belowre sub( 'ab{ , }''''abb abbb abbbb abbbbbbbbb ''abb *bbbbbbthe can go after any of the numeric specifierslike +?-???etc the character the character acts as an "or here is an example