Regular Expressions 101

Community Patterns

22

Get path from any text

Created·2023-01-31 14:38
Updated·2023-07-23 20:17
Flavor·PCRE2 (PHP)
Recommended·
Get path (windows style) from any type of text (error message, e-mail corps ...), quoted or not. THIS IS THE SINGLE LINE VERSION ! If you want understand how it work or edit it, go https://regex101.com/r/7o2fyy Relative path are not supported The goal is to catch what "Look like" a path. See the limitations UNC path and prefix path like //./], [//?/] or [//./UNC/] are allowed some url path like [file:///C:/] or [file://] are allowed Catch path quoted with ["] and [']. But these quotes are include with the catch Quoted path is not concerned by limitations Limitations : (only unquoted path) [dot] and [space] is allowed, but not in a row [dot+space] or [space+dot at end of file name isn't catched INSIDE A NAME FILE (or last directory if it is a path to a directory) : [comma] is not supported (it stop the catch) after a first [dot], any [space] stop the catch after a [space], catch is stoped if next character is not a [letter], [digit] or [-] so, double [space] stop the catch Compatibility compatible PCRE, PCRE2 AutoHotkey : don't forget to escape "%" in "`%" /!\ Powershell and .Net /!\\ : this regex need some modification to be interpreted by powershell. You have to replace each (?&CapturGroupName) by \k. Use this powershell code to do this replacement : ` $powershellRegex = @' [Put here the regex to replace (?&CapturGroupName) with \k] '@ -replace '\(\?&(\w+)\)', '\k' ` This example code must return : [Put here the regex to replace \k with \k]
Submitted by nitrateag

Community Library Entry

2

Regular Expression
Created·2026-03-06 15:52
Flavor·PCRE2 (PHP)

/
(?i)\b(password|secret|api[_-]?key)\b\s*[:=]\s*(?!\s*\$\{)(?!\s*process\.env\b)(?:['"])?[A-Za-z0-9!*@#$%^&*()_+=-]{5,}(?:['"])?
/
gm
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Description

This is a GitHub Advanced Security (GHAS) Secret Scanning Custom Pattern I created to detect likely hardcoded credentials while reducing common false positives in code.

Goal: detect assignments for these key names: password secret apikey / api_key / api-key

Pattern regex:

(?i)\b(password|secret|api[_-]?key)\b\s*[:=]\s*(?!\s*\$\{)(?!\s*process\.env\b)(?:['"])?[A-Za-z0-9!*@#$%^&*()_+=-]{5,}(?:['"])?

What it should catch (examples): password: "ahsjdfahsjfhdjsahj" secret = 'kjfskahfsdhfj' apikey: ABCDE12345!@# (unquoted)

What it tries NOT to catch (common false positives): password: ${password_somename} (template/variable placeholder) secret: ${VAULT_SECRET} password: process.env.DB_PASSWORD (env var reference, not a hardcoded secret)

This is intended as a practical baseline; it won’t be perfect for every language/config style. If you have suggestions to improve the detection accuracy (reduce false positives/false negatives) for GHAS custom patterns, please share.

Submitted by GearoidMaguire