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 = '<tbody><tr><td class="time">111 minutes ago</td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="/image?track_id=5022" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url(&quot;/image?track_id=5022&quot;)"></div></td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="/artist?artist=Jeremy+Soule">Jeremy Soule</a></span>–<a href="/track?trackartist=Jeremy+Soule&amp;title=Crystal+Oasis">Crystal Oasis</a></td></tr><tr><td class="time">113 minutes ago</td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="/image?track_id=225" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url(&quot;/image?track_id=225&quot;)"></div></td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="/artist?artist=Jeremy+Soule">Jeremy Soule</a></span>–<a href="/track?trackartist=Jeremy+Soule&amp;title=Land+of+the+Golden+Sun">Land of the Golden Sun</a></td></tr><tr><td class="time">2 hours ago</td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="/image?track_id=11687" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url(&quot;/image?track_id=11687&quot;)"></div></td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="/artist?artist=SunoAI">SunoAI</a></span>–<a href="/track?trackartist=SunoAI&amp;title=Kapitan+%28%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%29">Kapitan (Капитан)</a></td></tr><tr><td class="time">2 hours ago</td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="/image?track_id=11686" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url(&quot;/image?track_id=11686&quot;)"></div></td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="/artist?artist=SunoAI">SunoAI</a></span>–<a href="/track?trackartist=SunoAI&amp;title=Let%27s+Swing+the+Oars+%28%E8%AE%A9%E6%88%91%E4%BB%AC%E8%8D%A1%E8%B5%B7%E5%8F%8C%E6%A1%A8%29">Let\'s Swing the Oars (让我们荡起双桨)</a></td></tr><tr><td class="time">3 hours ago</td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="/image?track_id=225" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url(&quot;/image?track_id=225&quot;)"></div></td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="/artist?artist=Jeremy+Soule">Jeremy Soule</a></span>–<a href="/track?trackartist=Jeremy+Soule&amp;title=Land+of+the+Golden+Sun">Land of the Golden Sun</a></td></tr><tr><td class="time">3 hours ago</td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="/image?track_id=11089" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url(&quot;/image?track_id=11089&quot;)"></div></td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="/artist?artist=Jeremy+Soule">Jeremy Soule</a></span>–<a href="/track?trackartist=Jeremy+Soule&amp;title=Gathering+Storm">Gathering Storm</a></td></tr><tr><td class="time">3 hours ago</td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="/image?track_id=225" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url(&quot;/image?track_id=225&quot;)"></div></td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="/artist?artist=Jeremy+Soule">Jeremy Soule</a></span>–<a href="/track?trackartist=Jeremy+Soule&amp;title=Land+of+the+Golden+Sun">Land of the Golden Sun</a></td></tr><tr><td class="time">13 hours ago</td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="/image?track_id=11654" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url(&quot;/image?track_id=11654&quot;)"></div></td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="/artist?artist=Jihyo">Jihyo</a></span>–<a href="/track?trackartist=Jihyo&amp;title=Killin%27+Me+Good+%28English+Ver.%29">Killin\' Me Good (English Ver.)</a></td></tr><tr><td class="time">13 hours ago</td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="/image?track_id=3907" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url(&quot;/image?track_id=3907&quot;)"></div></td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="/artist?artist=Soyeon">Soyeon</a></span>–<a href="/track?trackartist=Soyeon&amp;title=Psycho">Psycho</a></td></tr><tr><td class="time">13 hours ago</td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="/image?track_id=3906" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url(&quot;/image?track_id=3906&quot;)"></div></td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="/artist?artist=Soyeon">Soyeon</a></span>–<a href="/track?trackartist=Soyeon&amp;title=Quit">Quit</a></td></tr><tr><td class="time">13 hours ago</td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="/image?track_id=3720" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url(&quot;/image?track_id=3720&quot;)"></div></td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="/artist?artist=Soyeon">Soyeon</a></span>–<a href="/track?trackartist=Soyeon&amp;title=Beam+Beam">Beam Beam</a></td></tr><tr><td class="time">13 hours ago</td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="/image?track_id=11257" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url(&quot;/image?track_id=11257&quot;)"></div></td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="/artist?artist=Soyeon">Soyeon</a></span>–<a href="/track?trackartist=Soyeon&amp;title=A-MOONO-KE+%28I%E2%80%99m+OK%29">A-MOONO-KE (I’m OK)</a></td></tr></tbody>'; my $regex = qr/<tr><td class="time">([a-zA-Z0-9 ]+)<\/td><td class="icon"><div class="lazy entered loaded" data-bg="([^[<>]+)" data-ll-status="loaded" style="background-image:url\(&quot;([^[<>]+)&quot;\)"><\/div><\/td><td class="track"><span class="artist_in_trackcolumn"><a href="([^[<>]+)">([^[<>]+)<\/a><\/span>–<a href="([^[<>]+)">([^[<>]+)<\/a><\/td><\/tr>/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