Metacharacters are characters with special meanings in Regular Expressions.
The metacharacters supported by the regular expressions in Java are as follows:
| Metacharacters | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ( | a left parenthesis |
| ) | a right parenthesis |
| [ | a left bracket |
| ] | a right bracket |
| { | a left brace |
| { | a right brace |
| \ | a backslash |
| ^ | a caret |
| $ | a dollar sign |
| | | a vertical bar |
| ? | a question mark |
| * | an asterisk |
| + | an addition sign |
| . | a dot or period |
| < | a less-than sign |
| > | a greater-than sign |
| - | a hyphen |
| = | an equal to sign |
| ! | an exclamation mark |