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 single character of: a, b, c or d
    [[ab][cd]]
  • 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]
  • Character class intersection
    [\w&&[^\d]]
  • 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

"
"
g

Test String

Substitution

Processing...

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

# coding=utf8 # the above tag defines encoding for this document and is for Python 2.x compatibility import re regex = r"(?=(?:....)*$)" test_str = ("<html>\n" "<head>\n" "<title>Credit Card Test</title>\n" "</head>\n\n" "<body>\n" "<h1>Credit Card Test</h1>\n\n" "<form>\n" "<p>Please enter your credit card number:</p>\n\n" "<p><input type=\"text\" size=\"20\" name=\"cardnumber\"\n" " onkeyup=\"validatecardnumber(this.value)\"></p>\n\n" "<p id=\"notice\">(no card number entered)</p>\n" "</form>\n\n" "<script>\n" "function validatecardnumber(cardnumber) {\n" " // Strip spaces and dashes\n" " cardnumber = cardnumber.replace(/[ -]/g, '');\n" " // See if the card is valid\n" " // The regex will capture the number in one of the capturing groups\n" " var match = /^(?:(4[0-9]{12}(?:[0-9]{3})?)|(5[1-5][0-9]{14})|↵\n" "(6(?:011|5[0-9]{2})[0-9]{12})|(3[47][0-9]{13})|(3(?:0[0-5]|[68][0-9])↵\n" "[0-9]{11})|((?:2131|1800|35[0-9]{3})[0-9]{11}))$/.exec(cardnumber);\n" " if (match) {\n" " // List of card types, in the same order as the regex capturing groups\n" " var types = ['Visa', 'MasterCard', 'Discover', 'American Express',\n" " 'Diners Club', 'JCB'];\n" " // Find the capturing group that matched\n" " // Skip the zeroth element of the match array (the overall match)\n" " for (var i = 1; i < match.length; i++) {\n" " if (match[i]) {\n" " // Display the card type for that group\n" " document.getElementById('notice').innerHTML = types[i - 1];\n" " break;\n" " }\n" " }\n" " } else {\n" " document.getElementById('notice').innerHTML = '(invalid card number)';\n" " }\n" "}\n" "</script>\n" "</body>\n" "</html>\n") subst = "-" # You can manually specify the number of replacements by changing the 4th argument result = re.sub(regex, subst, test_str, 0) if result: print (result) # Note: for Python 2.7 compatibility, use ur"" to prefix the regex and u"" to prefix the test string and substitution.

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 Python, please visit: https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html