Escaping special characters

Is there an escape character? I've read through the api docs and the list
archive and see that I need to use \\ to match '\' but what about the '.' or
'-' or '[' 
I've tried things like \\. or \\- or \\[ but these are incorrect. What is
the correct way to escape these characters?

I've done a google search looking for any other documents or articles on
using Jakarta regexp, but no good hits. If anyone knows of any outside
links/resources regarding Jakarta regexp I'd love to find them.


-- 

Patrick Clancy