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

/
/
gm

Test String

Code Generator

Generated Code

import java.util.regex.Matcher; import java.util.regex.Pattern; public class Example { public static void main(String[] args) { final String regex = "^[a]\\w+"; final String string = "\n" + "a dance high our spouse\n" + "able danger hill out spring\n" + "about dark him outside square\n" + "above daughter himself over stairs\n" + "accident day hint own stairway\n" + "acid decide his oxygen stand\n" + "across decided history page stars\n" + "act decimal hold paint start\n" + "add deep hole pair state\n" + "admission delivery home pants statement\n" + "Africa dentist hope paper stay\n" + "after deposit horse paragraph step\n" + "again describe hospital parents stick\n" + "against desert hot park still\n" + "age design hotel part stone\n" + "ago desk hours party stood\n" + "agree destination house passed stop\n" + "aide developed how passengers store\n" + "air diary however password storm\n" + "alarm dictionary huge past story\n" + "all did human pattern stove\n" + "almost didn't hundred pay straight\n" + "alone died husband payment strange\n" + "already difference I pedestrians street\n" + "also different I'll pen strong\n" + "although digital ice pencil students\n" + "always diner idea people study\n" + "am dinner if per subject\n" + "ambulance direct important period subtract\n" + "America direction in perishable subway\n" + "amount directions inches person such"; final Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex, Pattern.MULTILINE); final Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(string); while (matcher.find()) { System.out.println("Full match: " + matcher.group(0)); for (int i = 1; i <= matcher.groupCount(); i++) { System.out.println("Group " + i + ": " + matcher.group(i)); } } } }

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 Java, please visit: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html