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

r"
"
gm

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

import java.util.regex.Matcher; import java.util.regex.Pattern; public class Example { public static void main(String[] args) { final String regex = "(?:(?P<Day1>\\d{1,2})(?:\\W*(?P<Month1>[A-Z][a-z]*\\b))|(?:(?P<Month2>[A-Z][a-z]*\\b)\\W*)(?:(?P<Day2>\\d{1,2})(?:\\b|th|st|nd))?|(?P<Month3>\\d{1,2})\\W+(?P<Day3>\\d{1,2})|(?P<Month4>\\d{1,2}))?\\W+?(?P<Year>\\d{2,4}(?=$|;))"; final String string = "04/20/2009\n" + "04/20/09\n" + "4/20/09\n" + "4/3/09\n" + "Mar-20-2009\n" + "Mar 20, 2009\n" + "March 20, 2009\n" + "Mar. 20, 2009\n" + "Mar 20 2009;\n" + "20 Mar 2009\n" + "20 March 2009\n" + "20 Mar. 2009\n" + "20 March, 2009\n" + "Mar 20th, 2009\n" + "Mar 21st, 2009\n" + "Mar 22nd, 2009\n" + "Feb 2009\n" + "Sep 2009\n" + "Oct 2010\n" + "6/2008\n" + "12/2009\n" + "2009\n" + "2010"; 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