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 = 'libtool.x86_64 2.4.6-8.cm2 @System libxml2.x86_64 2.10.3-1.cm2 @System libxml2-devel.x86_64 2.10.3-1.cm2 @System lua.x86_64 5.4.4-1.cm2 @System lua-libs.x86_64 5.4.4-1.cm2 @System m4.x86_64 1.4.19-1.cm2 @System make.x86_64 4.3-2.cm2 @System mariner-check-macros.noarch 2.0-21.cm2 @System mariner-repos.noarch 2.0-8.cm2 @System mariner-repos-shared.noarch 2.0-8.cm2 @System mariner-rpm-macros.noarch 2.0-21.cm2 @System mpfr.x86_64 4.1.0-1.cm2 @System mpfr-devel.x86_64 4.1.0-1.cm2 @System msopenjdk-11.x86_64 11.0.18-1 @System ncurses.x86_64 6.4-1.cm2 @System ncurses-compat.x86_64 6.4-1.cm2 @System ncurses-devel.x86_64 6.4-1.cm2 @System ncurses-libs.x86_64 6.4-1.cm2 @System ncurses-term.x86_64 6.4-1.cm2 @System newt.x86_64 0.52.21-4.cm2 @System newt-lang.x86_64 0.52.21-4.cm2 @System nghttp2.x86_64 1.46.0-2.cm2 @System npth.x86_64 1.6-4.cm2 @System openssl.x86_64 1.1.1k-24.cm2 @System openssl-devel.x86_64 1.1.1k-24.cm2 @System'; my $regex = qr`^\s*([[:alnum:]_.+-]+)\.([[:alnum:]_+-]+)\s+([[:alnum:]._+~-]+)\.([[:alpha:]]+[[:digit:]]+)`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