Regular expressions provide a flexible and powerful way to match text patterns in file names and directories. VX Search provides RegEx pattern matching operators for the file name search rule and the file path search rule.

In order to search files using a regular expression, select the 'File Name' file matching rule, select the 'RegEx' pattern matching operator and enter a regular expression that should be matched. For example, the '\.(JPG|BMP|PNG)$' regular expression will match all JPG, BMP and PNG image files.

Regular expressions may be combined with other types of file matching rules allowing one to match a very specific set of files. In addition to the ability to match files using regular expressions, VX Search allows one to exclude files using regular expressions. For example, in order to search all programs and executable files while excluding files located in the Windows directory, use the regular expression '^(?!C:\\WINDOWS)' applied to the 'Full Path' file matching rule.