Regular Expressions 101

Pro

^start of line

Negative Lookahead(?!(?:[^'\n]*'){2})

Non-Capturing Group(?:[^'\n]*'){2}

{2}repeats the group contents below exactly 2 times:

Negated Character Class[^'\n]*

*matches any number of characters outside the set below:

'the literal ' (39₁₀ / 47₈ / 27₁₆)

\na line-feed (newline) character (ASCII 10)

'the literal ' (39₁₀ / 47₈ / 27₁₆)

\p{L}+any Unicode letter, repeated at least once

Non-Capturing Group(?:[ '-]\p{L}+){0,3}

{0,3}repeats the group contents below between 0 and 3 times:

Character Class[ '-]

the literal (32₁₀ / 40₈ / 20₁₆)

'the literal ' (39₁₀ / 47₈ / 27₁₆)

-the literal - (45₁₀ / 55₈ / 2D₁₆)

\p{L}+any Unicode letter, repeated at least once

$end of line

Global pattern flags

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

m modifier: multiline. Causes ^ and $ to match the start and end of each line, not only the start and end of the string

Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.

25 tokens

Regular Expression

^(?!(?:[^'\n]*'){2})\p{L}+(?:[ '-]\p{L}+){0,3}$

New

// match:
one two three four
one-two-three-four
one-two-three four
vær så snill
тест регекс
re-read
under the hood
ONe
rabbit's lair

// not-match:
one two three four five
one two three four@
one-two-three-four five
rabbit"s lair
one' two's
one1
1900