Regular Expressions 101

Save & Share

Flavor

  • PCRE2 (PHP >=7.3)
  • PCRE (PHP <7.3)
  • ECMAScript (JavaScript)
  • Python
  • Golang
  • Java 8
  • .NET 7.0 (C#)
  • Rust
  • Regex Flavor Guide

Function

  • Match
  • Substitution
  • List
  • Unit Tests

Tools

Sponsors
There are currently no sponsors. Become a sponsor today!
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

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = 'fc8c266b-c8f2-11e5-9d5f-9e9121fad333 93d3df4b-c8f3-11e5-9d5f-d3f525e3d96f uddi:f0bb22eb-c8f3-11e5-9d5f-ab76fa0fe1ef uddi:a6f8027b-c8f5-11e5-9d5f-be39eae1ed33 uddi:1ee0417b-c8f2-11e5-9d5f-d5eb774576ea uddi:0e87b9f3-de46-11e6-a117-e9c8b22fac1e uddi:eca57383-de46-11e6-a117-9c0349538667 2a759413-de47-11e6-a117-f6cb2452465f Put ProDS NBSWLFRTService NEMEventProcessorService Nationwide_DiscoveryApp PendingTransactionsOrchestrationService UnclearedTransactions-1-0 "MtsiEnquiry service offers methods for the retrieval of information about a customer’s account" "MtsiEnquiry service offers methods for the retrieval of information about a customer’s account" "** Needs Checking as it was missing from CentraSite ** MtsiEnquiry service offers methods for the retrieval of information about a customer’s account" "** Needs Checking as it was missing from CentraSite ** This contains functionality not in 8.3 and needs to be merged back into the next iteration (i.e. any planned 8.4 version) MtsiEnquiry service offers methods for the retrieval of information about a customer’s account" "MtsiEnquiry service offers methods for the retrieval of information about a customer’s account with details like maindetails,additional details,offers ,etc." '; my $regex = qr/(uddi:)?(.{8}-.{4}-.{4}-.{4}-.{12})/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