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

re = /\A # Begin at the beginning only! (No doing it again) (?: # Non-capturing group consuming the string (?| # Branch reset on two groups: p2 and p3 (p for prefix) . # Consume a character (?=.*+\n(?<p2>\k<p2>?+.) # Lookahead: Go to next line. Then add a character to a group .*+\n(?<p3>\k<p3>?+.)) # Same. Will fail if the line is too short. | # When the first brach fails: .*+\n(?<p2>)(?<p3>) # Consume the rest of the string. Reset the groups. )+? # As little as possible (Only one character at a time) (?<=X)(?=.*\n\k<p2>(?<=X).*\n\k<p3>(?<=X)) # Check to see if there's a column of X's (?=[\s\S]*(?<count>[\s\S](?(<count>)\k<count>))) # Add a character to a count group at the end. )+ # Keep doing it until all is consumed/mx str = 'XX XX XX X X X' # Print the match result str.scan(re) do |match| puts match.to_s end

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 Ruby, please visit: http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.0/Regexp.html