Hi, I have a version number of the following form: version.release.modification where version, release and modification are either a set of digits or the '*' wildcard character. Additionally, any of these numbers (and any preceding .) may be missing. So the following are valid and parse as: 1.23.456 = version 1, release 23, modification 456 1.23 = version 1, release 23, any modification 1.23.* = version 1, release 23, any modification 1.* = version 1, any release, any modification 1 = version 1, any release, any modification * = any version, any release, any modification But these are not valid: *.12 *123.1 12* 12.*.34 Can anyone provide me a not-too-complex regex to validate and retrieve the release, version and modification numbers? Many thanks! Thanks for all the responses! This is ace :) Based on OneByOne's answer (which looked the simplest to me), I added some non-capturing groups (the '(?:' parts - thanks to VonC for introducing me to non-capturing groups!), so the groups that do capture only contain the digits or * character. ^(?:(\d+)\.)?(?:(\d+)\.)?(\*|\d+)$ Many thanks to everyone!