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

/
/
gxm

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/# Match vertical grid. (\|) (?= \s+ .+ \| \s* $ | $) | # Match header colon. ( (?<= \| \s ) : | : (?= \s \| ) ) | # Match horizontal grid. (?<= \| \s | \ | \s : ) (-+) (?= :? \s \| ) /xm'; $str = '# Match | Time | Block | | ----------: | :---------------- | | (00:00) | (Revision #1) | | | | | 00:00-00:00 | Chunk | | | - Note w/ details | | 00:00-00:00 | Some meeting | | 11:00-13:00 | Chunk | | | - Note w/ details | | | | | (00:00) | (Revision #1) | | 00:00-00:00 | Chunk | | | - Note w/ details | | Tracker | Task | Backlog | | ----------: | :------------- | :------------ | | 00:00-00:00 | [x] Task one | [[wiki.link | | 00:00-00:00 | | | | 0m | | | | | | | | | [<] Task two | [[wiki.link]] | | | [<] Task three | [[wiki.link]] | | Column 1 | Column 2 | | :------: | :------: | | (1, 1) | (1, 2) | | (2, 1) | (2, 2) | | (3, 1) | (3, 2) | # Do not match. Some pipes | do match | I wonder why | hmm?'; preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0); // Print the entire match result var_dump($matches);

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