Examples of regular expressions
The following examples walk you through creating regular expressions for several different formats.
MAC addresses
Media Access Control (MAC) is a unique identifier for network interfaces with 6-byte fields normally written in hexadecimal.
ipconfig with the /all switch parameter can show the MAC address of each interface. The address is written in hexadecimal, and each byte is separated by a hyphen, for example, 1a-2b-3c-4d-5f-6d.
On Linux or Unix-based systems, the ip address command shows the hardware (MAC) address for interfaces. Each hexadecimal byte is separated by a :, such as 1a:2b:3c:4d:5f:6d.
A regular expression can be created to simultaneously match these formats. The expression matches the output from the ipconfig /all command on Windows and the ip address command on Linux. In both cases, the MAC address appears after a space at the end of a line.
Considering the preceding formats, the MAC address is made up of...
