Administrator Guide

Regular Expressions as Filters
Regular expressions are used to lter AS paths or community lists. A regular expression is a special character used to dene a pattern that
is then compared with an input string.
For an AS-path access list, as shown in the previous commands, if the AS path matches the regular expression in the access list, the route
matches the access list.
The following lists the regular expressions accepted in Dell Networking OS.
Regular
Expression
Denition
^ (caret) Matches the beginning of the input string. Alternatively, when used as the rst character within brackets [^ ], this
matches any number except the ones specied within the brackets.
$ (dollar) Matches the end of the input string.
. (period) Matches any single character, including white space.
* (asterisk) Matches 0 or more sequences of the immediately previous character or pattern.
+ (plus) Matches 1 or more sequences of the immediately previous character or pattern.
? (question) Matches 0 or 1 sequence of the immediately previous character or pattern.
( ) (parenthesis) Species patterns for multiple use when one of the multiplier metacharacters follows: asterisk *, plus sign +, or
question mark ?
[ ] (brackets) Matches any enclosed character and species a range of single characters.
- (hyphen) Used within brackets to specify a range of AS or community numbers.
_ (underscore) Matches a ^, a $, a comma, a space, or a {, or a }. Placed on either side of a string to specify a literal and disallow
substring matching. You can precede or follow numerals enclosed by underscores by any of the characters listed.
| (pipe) Matches characters on either side of the metacharacter; logical OR.
As seen in the following example, the expressions are displayed when using the show commands. To view the AS-PATH ACL conguration,
use the
show config command in CONFIGURATION AS-PATH ACL mode and the show ip as-path-access-list command in
EXEC Privilege mode.
For more information about this command and route ltering, refer to Filtering BGP Routes.
The following example applies access list Eagle to routes inbound from BGP peer 10.5.5.2. Access list Eagle uses a regular expression to
deny routes originating in AS 32. The rst lines shown in bold create the access list and lter. The second lines shown in bold are the regular
expression shown as part of the access list lter.
Example of Using Regular Expression to Filter AS Paths
Dell(config)#router bgp 99
Dell(conf-router_bgp)#neigh AAA peer-group
Dell(conf-router_bgp)#neigh AAA no shut
Dell(conf-router_bgp)#show conf
!
router bgp 99
neighbor AAA peer-group
neighbor AAA no shutdown
neighbor 10.155.15.2 remote-as 32
neighbor 10.155.15.2 shutdown
Dell(conf-router_bgp)#neigh 10.155.15.2 filter-list 1 in
Dell(conf-router_bgp)#ex
Dell(conf)#ip as-path access-list Eagle
206
Border Gateway Protocol IPv4 (BGPv4)