title: Period in .Net 3.5 Regex.IsMatch
body: <p>I came across this regular expression in vb.net 3.5 code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Regex.IsMatch(strString, "^[\w\s.+'\-\(\)\/\,\&amp;\#]+$")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What is really confusing me is the ".+" part.  I was under the impression that the period means any character and the plus sign means one or more.  Following this, I feel like this regular expression should allow anything!  But it doesn't, so I must be misunderstanding something.  In testing it, it seems like the period and the plus sign are being taken as literals.</p>
  
  <p>Could somebody help explain this to me?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>