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

/
/
gmi

Test String

Substitution

Processing...

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = '[8] Frank Sinatra - One For My Friend.flac [51] Come Fly With Me - Frank Sinatra.dsf [2] Frank Sinatra - Love Me Tender.flac [17] New York, New York.mp3 [45] Singing In The Rain - Frank Sinatra.flac RegExDictionary:LOOKUP0=00:LOOKUP1=01:LOOKUP2=02:LOOKUP3=03:LOOKUP4=04:LOOKUP5=05:LOOKUP6=06:LOOKUP7=07:LOOKUP8=08:LOOKUP9=09'; my $regex = qr/((?s)(\[)(\d)(\])([ ])(?=.*:LOOKUP\3=(\w+))|(\[(\d+)\])[ ])((?<artist1>Frank Sinatra)?(\s-\s)(?<title1>.*)(?<ext1>\..*)|(?<title2>.*)(\s-\s)(?<artist2>Frank Sinatra)(?<ext2>\..*)|(?<title3>.*)(?<ext3>\..*))|(?<dict>RegExDictionary:.*)$/mip; my $subst = '$6$8${title1}${title2}${title3}${ext1}${ext2}${ext3}'; my $result = $str =~ s/$regex/$subst/rg; print "The result of the substitution is' $result\n";

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