Space in regex

I'm trying to match alphanumeric characters, some common symbols, and spaces. Why does this NOT match strings containing spaces?: [A-Za-z0-9\'.&-:underscore::space:] I've also tried these, that also fail to match strings containing spaces: [A-Za-z0-9\'.&- :underscore:] [A-Z a-z0-9\'.&-:underscore:] [:space:A-Za-z0-9\'.&-:underscore:] All these regexes match strings containing the specified characters, but none of them match strings with spaces. Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com/ http://technology-sleuth.com/