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

/
/
gm

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = 'MATCH: 09/18/2005 08/05/2004 01/01/2000 01/02/1934 09-18-2005 12/13/2000 12/31/2000 12-31-2000 11/30/2000 02/28/2002 02/29/2002 04-30-2005 06/04/1987 10/23/1999 02/25/2004 NO MATCH: 01/01/2006 09/19/2005 09/25/2005 09-19-2005 09-18/2005 09/18-2005 10/20/2005 08/34/2004 01/00/2000 00/01/2000 001/01/2000 01/001/2000 13/14/2000 12/32/2000 11/31/2000 11/30/ 2000 01/02/1834 02/30/2002 04-31-2005 09/18/2023 06/23/2008 04/03/2026'; my $regex = qr/^(?=\d{2}([-\/])\d{2}(?:\1)\d{4})(?:((?:(?:0[13578]|1[02])[-\/](?:0[1-9]|[1-2]\d|3[01])|(?:0[469]|11)[-\/](?:0[1-9]|[1-2]\d|30)|02[-\/](?:0[1-9]|[1-2]\d))[-\/])(?:19\d{2}|200[0-4])|(?!09[-\/](?:19|2|3)|1)(?-1)2005)$/mp; if ( $str =~ /$regex/g ) { print "Whole match is ${^MATCH} and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[0] and \$+[0]\n"; # print "Capture Group 1 is $1 and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[1] and \$+[1]\n"; # print "Capture Group 2 is $2 ... and so on\n"; } # ${^POSTMATCH} and ${^PREMATCH} are also available with the use of '/p' # Named capture groups can be called via $+{name}

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 Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html