Regular expressions are more versatile than the basic patterns they contain. Patterns can contain sub-matches. Sub-matches are located between parentheses and enable splitting the regular expression. The "|" character means "or" in regular expressions.

To look for the pattern "ab" or "bc" or "cd", use the sub-match expression "(ab|bc|cd)".

To look for the pattern "[weekend day name] [time of day]", use the pattern "(Saturday|Sunday) (Morning|Afternoon|Night)". This matches every sequence of text that contains "Saturday Morning", "Saturday Afternoon", "Saturday Night", "Sunday Morning", "Sunday Afternoon", or "Sunday Night".