@cindex alpha character class, regexp
@cindex xdigit character class, regexp
- Here is a table of the classes you can use in a character alternative,
-and what they mean:
+ Below is a table of the classes you can use in a character
+alternative, and what they mean. Note that the @samp{[} and @samp{]}
+characters that enclose the class name are part of the name, so a
+regular expression using these classes needs one more pair of
+brackets. For example, a regular expression matching a sequence of
+one or more letters and digits would be @samp{[[:alnum:]]+}, not
+@samp{[:alnum:]+}.
@table @samp
@item [:ascii:]