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
Processing...

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

import re regex = re.compile(r"\b[a-zA-Z]*\d{5,}[a-zA-Z]*\b", flags=re.MULTILINE) test_str = ("Corresponding to\\n\"\n" "... \"1 102742238 CN A 2012-10-17 ZTE USA Inc. US20130094411A1\\n\"\n" "... \"3 20150318972 2015-11-05 Zhang et al.\\n\"\n" "... \"2 20130128860 2013-05-23 Zhang\\n\"\n" "... \"1 20130094411 2013-04-18 Zhang\\n\"\n" "... \"EFS Web 2.1.17\\n\"\n" "... \"Examiner Signature Date Considered\\n\"\n" "... \"3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; Evolved Universal\\n\"\n" "... \"1 Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Physical channels and modulation (Release 12), 3GPP TS 36.211 V12.7.0\\n\"\n" "... \"fONAR_ NAN 12R nanac\\n\"\n" "... \"vs Corresponding to\\n\"\n" "... \"4 2014110837 WO Al 2014-07-24 Fujitsu Ltd. et al. US20150318972A1\\n\"\n" "... \"3 2014107012 WO Al 2014-07-10 LG Electronics Inc.\\n\"\n" "... \"; Corresponding to\\n\"\n" "... \"2 103120006 CN A 2013-05-22 ZTE Corporation US20130128860A1\\n\"\n" "... \"EFS Web 2.1.17\\n\"\n" "... \"| |\\n\"\n") matches = regex.finditer(test_str) for match_num, match in enumerate(matches, start=1): print(f"Match {match_num} was found at {match.start()}-{match.end()}: {match.group()}") for group_num, group in enumerate(match.groups(), start=1): print(f"Group {group_num} found at {match.start(group_num)}-{match.end(group_num)}: {group}")

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 Python, please visit: https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html