Regex to Match Symbols: !$%^&*()_+|~-=`{}[]:";'<>?,./

Solution 1:

The regular expression for this is really simple. Just use a character class. The hyphen is a special character in character classes, so it needs to be first:

/[-!$%^&*()_+|~=`{}\[\]:";'<>?,.\/]/

You also need to escape the other regular expression metacharacters.

Edit: The hyphen is special because it can be used to represent a range of characters. This same character class can be simplified with ranges to this:

/[$-/:-?{-~!"^_`\[\]]/

There are three ranges. '$' to '/', ':' to '?', and '{' to '~'. the last string of characters can't be represented more simply with a range: !"^_`[].

Use an ACSII table to find ranges for character classes.

Solution 2:

The most simple and shortest way to accomplish this:

/[^\p{L}\d\s@#]/u

Explanation

[^...] Match a single character not present in the list below

• \p{L} => matches any kind of letter from any language

• \d => matches a digit zero through nine

• \s => matches any kind of invisible character

• @# => @ and # characters

Don't forget to pass the u (unicode) flag.

Solution 3:

Answer

/[\W\S_]/

Explanation

This creates a character class removing the word characters, space characters, and adding back the underscore character (as underscore is a "word" character). All that is left is the special characters. Capital letters represent the negation of their lowercase counterparts.

\W will select all non "word" characters equivalent to [^a-zA-Z0-9_]
\S will select all non "whitespace" characters equivalent to [ \t\n\r\f\v]
_ will select "_" because we negate it when using the \W and need to add it back in