Regular Expressions

.	Any character except newline	\c	Control character
\d	Digit	\D	non Digit
\s	Whitespace	\S	non Whitespace
\w	Word character [A-Za-z0-9]	\W	non Word character
^	Start of string	$	End of string
*	0 or more matches of previous expression
+	1 or more matches of previous expression
?	0 or 1 matches (optional). Stop search as soon as next expression is found (non greedy)

Perl

$var =~ /<pattern>/: Generic syntax, this expression is true if the pattern is matched in $var

Following variables are when a match is made:

$&: Contains the string matched by the last pattern match
$`: The string preceding whatever was matched by the last pattern match, not counting patterns matched in nested blocks that have been exited already.
$': The string following whatever was matched by the last pattern match, not counting patterns matched in nested blocks that have been exited already. For example:

    $_ = 'abcdefghi';
    /def/;
    print "$`:$&:$'n";
    # prints abc:def:ghi

$+: The last bracket matched by the last search pattern. This is useful if you don't know which of a set of alternative patterns matched. For example:

    /Version: (.*)|Revision: (.*)/
    && ($rev = $+);