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
  • Non-capturing group
    (?:...)
  • Capturing group
    (...)
  • 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

r"
"
gm

Test String

Substitution

Processing...

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/(?<=\w)(?<!\w-\w)(?: ?-+ ?)+(?=\w)(?!\w-\w)/m'; $str = '<!-- The following should match. Not the dashes in the comment tag, obviously ;P --> <h2 class="chapter_title">Chapter 01 -- The Beginning</h2> <h2 class="chapter_title">Chapter 02 - The Reckoning</h2> <h2 class="chapter_title">Chapter 03 - - The Aftermath</h2> <h2 class="chapter_title">Chapter 04--The Conclusion</h2> <p>I was having the usual - cheeseburger and a cold beer.</p> <!-- The following should not match --> <p>I was wearing a t-shirt.</p> <p>It was a drunken mix-up</p> <p>---</p> <p>-----</p> <p>- - -</p> <p> - - </p> <p> - - - </p> '; $subst = "&mdash;"; $result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str); echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;

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