Regular Expressions 101

Pro

startedthe literal text started (case sensitive)

Group 1(.*?(?:stored\s+(\d+)\s+)?)

.*?any Unicode character, repeated any number of times

Non-Capturing Group(?:stored\s+(\d+)\s+)?

?repeats the group contents below at most once:

storedthe literal text stored (case sensitive)

\s+a Unicode whitespace character, repeated at least once

Group 2(\d+)

\d+a Unicode decimal digit, repeated at least once

\s+a Unicode whitespace character, repeated at least once

finishedthe literal text finished (case sensitive)

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

Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.

25 tokens

Regular Expression

started(.*?(?:stored\s+(\d+)\s+)?)finished

New

started xx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xx
xx xxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxx found 9999 xxxxx xxxxx
xxx xx xxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxx stored 9999 finished

Substitution

started xx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xx
xx xxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxx found 9999 xxxxx xxxxx
xxx xx xxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxx stored 9999 finished