Regular Expressions 101

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An explanation of your regex will be automatically generated as you type.
Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.
  • All Tokens
  • Common Tokens
  • General Tokens
  • Anchors
  • Meta Sequences
  • Quantifiers
  • Group Constructs
  • Character Classes
  • Flags/Modifiers
  • Substitution
  • A single character of: a, b or c
    [abc]
  • A character except: a, b or c
    [^abc]
  • A character in the range: a-z
    [a-z]
  • A character not in the range: a-z
    [^a-z]
  • A character in the range: a-z or A-Z
    [a-zA-Z]
  • Any single character
    .
  • Alternate - match either a or b
    a|b
  • Any whitespace character
    \s
  • Any non-whitespace character
    \S
  • Any digit
    \d
  • Any non-digit
    \D
  • Any word character
    \w
  • Any non-word character
    \W
  • Match everything enclosed
    (?:...)
  • Capture everything enclosed
    (...)
  • Zero or one of a
    a?
  • Zero or more of a
    a*
  • One or more of a
    a+
  • Exactly 3 of a
    a{3}
  • 3 or more of a
    a{3,}
  • Between 3 and 6 of a
    a{3,6}
  • Start of string
    ^
  • End of string
    $
  • A word boundary
    \b
  • Non-word boundary
    \B

Regular Expression
No Match

/
/
igm

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/(?:^|\s)(([0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}:){7}[0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}|([0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}:){1,7}:|([0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}:){1,6}[0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}|([0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}:){1,5}(:[0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}){1,2}|([0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}:){1,4}(:[0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}){1,3}|([0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}:){1,3}(:[0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}){1,4}|([0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}:){1,2}(:[0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}){1,5}|[0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}:((:[0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}){1,6})|:((:[0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}){1,7}|:)|fe80:(:[0-9a-fA-F]{0,4}){0,4}%[0-9a-zA-Z]+|::(ffff(:0{1,4})?:)?((25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|1\d{0,2}|[1-9]?\d)\.){3}(25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|1\d{0,2}|[1-9]?\d)|([0-9a-fA-F]{1,4}:){1,4}:((25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|1\d{0,2}|[1-9]?\d)\.){3}(25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|1\d{0,2}|[1-9]?\d))(?=\s|$) /im'; $str = '{1: Initial address, regex should say valid/match} 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0042:8329 {2: After removing all leading zeroes, regex should say valid/match} 2001:db8:0:0:0:ff00:42:8329 {3: After omitting consecutive sections of zeroes, regex should say valid/match} 2001:db8::ff00:42:8329 {4: The loopback address, regex should say valid/match} 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001 {5: The loopback address be abbreviated to ::1 by using both rules, regex should say valid/match} ::1 {6: This should be valid, regex should say valid/match} ABCD:ABCD:ABCD:ABCD:ABCD:ABCD:192.168.158.190 {7: This should NOT be valid/match} :: {These two formats allows IPv6 applications to communicate directly with IPv4 applications, regex should say valid/match} {8} 0:0:0:0:0:ffff:192.1.56.10 {9} ::ffff:192.1.56.10/96 {These next two formats are used for tunneling. It allows IPv6 nodes to communicate across an IPv4 infrastructure, regex should say valid/match} {10} 0:0:0:0:0:0:192.1.56.10 {11} ::192.1.56.10/96 {These 4 should be valid/match} {12} ::FFFF:129.144.52.38 {13} ::129.144.52.38 {14} ::FFFF:d {15} 1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A {These 4 should NOT be valid/match} {16} ::FFFF:d.d.d {17} ::FFFF:d.d {18} ::d.d.d {19} ::d.d'; preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0); // Print the entire match result var_dump($matches);

Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php