any-text (+|*|?)? (except pattern)?

Used in a pattern to represent a single character. any-text matches any character except one in a newline sequence ("%n"). It is used instead of any to confine pattern matching to a single line.

any-text can be used with any of the pattern repetition and optionality modifiers:

• any-text+: any character must occur at least once, and may occur several times.
• any-text*: any character can occur several times, or not at all.
• any-text?: any character may occur once, or may be omitted.