Win8 Strawberry 5.30.3.1 (64) Thu 07/22/2021 20:17:20 C:\@Work\Perl\monks >perl -wMstrict -MYAPE::Regex::Explain -e "print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new(qr/^[\r\n\t -~]*$/s)->explain;" The regular expression: (?s-imx:^[\r\n\t -~]*$) matches as follows: NODE EXPLANATION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (?s-imx: group, but do not capture (with . matching \n) (case-sensitive) (with ^ and $ matching normally) (matching whitespace and # normally): ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ^ the beginning of the string ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [\r\n\t -~]* any character of: '\r' (carriage return), '\n' (newline), '\t' (tab), ' ' to '~' (0 or more times (matching the most amount possible)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- $ before an optional \n, and the end of the string ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ) end of grouping ----------------------------------------------------------------------