Regular Expressions- Match Anything

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Normally the dot matches any character except newlines.

So if .* isn’t working, set the “dot matches newlines, too” option (or use (?s).*).

If you’re using JavaScript, which doesn’t have a “dotall” option, try [\s\S]*. This means “match any number of characters that are either whitespace or non-whitespace” – effectively “match any string”.

Another option that only works for JavaScript (and is not recognized by any other regex flavor) is [^]* which also matches any string. But [\s\S]* seems to be more widely used, perhaps because it’s more portable.

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