Regular Expressions 101

1st Alternative<a(?:\s[^>]*)?>.*?<\/a>(*SKIP)(*F)

<athe literal text <a (case insensitive)

Non-Capturing Group(?:\s[^>]*)?

?repeats the group contents below at most once:

\sany whitespace character

Negated Character Class[^>]*

*matches any number of characters outside the set below:

>the literal > (62₁₀ / 76₈ / 3E₁₆)

.*?any character, repeated any number of times

<the literal < (60₁₀ / 74₈ / 3C₁₆)

\/the literal / (47₁₀ / 57₈ / 2F₁₆)

a>the literal text a> (case insensitive)

(*SKIP)acts like (*PRUNE), but the next unanchored match attempt starts where (*SKIP) was reached instead of at the next subject character

(*F)forces the current match attempt to fail at this position

2nd Alternative\bMatch Me\b

\ban ASCII word boundary

Match Methe literal text Match Me (case insensitive)

\ban ASCII word boundary

Global pattern flags

g modifier: global. Finds all matches instead of stopping after the first

s modifier: single line. Allows a dot to match line terminators

i modifier: insensitive. Matches without distinguishing uppercase and lowercase letters

Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.

25 tokens

Regular Expression

<a(?:\s[^>]*)?>.*?<\/a>(*SKIP)(*F)|\bMatch Me\b

New

<a href="#">Don't Match Me <span>web</span></a>
<a href="#">Don't Match Me</a>
Match Me
<span>Match Me</span>

<a href="#">Don't Match Me <span>web</span></a>
<a href="#">Don't Match Me</a>
Match Me
<span>Match Me</span>