"Match a literal character", or "match a character literally"?

Question

I was making a RegEx using the regex101 tool and read in the explanation field

[.] - the literal character .

[\.] - matches the character . literally

I get lost between "literal character" and "character literally". What is the difference between these two?

Answer 1

There is no difference. Sorry, I take that back. The only difference the words that Firas Dib, the author of regx101, chose to explain various tokens.

A literal character or matching something literally refers to specifying an actual character in the text: for instance, a to match a, as opposed to a character class such as \w that could also match a.

You can match a literal period in either of these three ways:

1. \.
2. [.]
3. [\.]

Which Option is Better?

• Some people like option 2 because it makes it clear you are matching a period, not the catch-all dot. It stands out. For myself, I use \.. Some people will say that using a character class is less optimal, but on modern processors it makes no difference. You pick.
• Option 3 is over the top and is typically used when someone doesn't know that periods don't need to be escaped inside a character class. In my view it's confusing. What did the author mean? Were they trying to create a character class to match either a backslash or a period, and made a typo? (That would be [\\.]