Regular Expressions 101

Pro

Group 1(\b(?:a|an|the)\b(?:(?!\b(?:a|an|the)\b).)*?)

\ba Unicode word boundary

Non-Capturing Group(?:a|an|the)

1st Alternativea

athe literal a (97₁₀ / 141₈ / 61₁₆) (case sensitive)

2nd Alternativean

anthe literal text an (case sensitive)

3rd Alternativethe

thethe literal text the (case sensitive)

\ba Unicode word boundary

Non-Capturing Group(?:(?!\b(?:a|an|the)\b).)*?

*?repeats the group contents below any number of times:

Negative Lookahead(?!\b(?:a|an|the)\b)

\ba Unicode word boundary

Non-Capturing Group(?:a|an|the)

1st Alternativea

athe literal a (97₁₀ / 141₈ / 61₁₆) (case sensitive)

2nd Alternativean

anthe literal text an (case sensitive)

3rd Alternativethe

thethe literal text the (case sensitive)

\ba Unicode word boundary

.any Unicode character (except for line terminators)

Group 2(\b\d{1,5}\b)

\ba Unicode word boundary

\d{1,5}a Unicode decimal digit, repeated between 1 and 5 times

\ba Unicode word boundary

Global pattern flags

g modifier: global. Finds all matches instead of stopping after the first

m modifier: multiline. Causes ^ and $ to match the start and end of each line, not only the start and end of the string

Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.

25 tokens

(\b(?:a|an|the)\b(?:(?!\b(?:a|an|the)\b).)*?)(\b\d{1,5}\b)

New

bla bla, the document nr is 10101 where the other doc nr is 34454 with...