Regular Expressions 101

Explanation

Pro

1st Alternative(?:\s|^)(['"])(?:\1|.*?[^\\]\1)

Non-Capturing Group(?:\s|^)

1st Alternative\s

\sany whitespace character

2nd Alternative^

^start of line

Group 1(['"])

Character Class['"]

'the literal ' (39₁₀ / 47₈ / 27₁₆)

"the literal " (34₁₀ / 42₈ / 22₁₆)

Non-Capturing Group(?:\1|.*?[^\\]\1)

1st Alternative\1

\1the text saved by group 1

2nd Alternative.*?[^\\]\1

.*?any character (except for line terminators), repeated any number of times

Negated Character Class[^\\]

\\the literal \ (92₁₀ / 134₈ / 5C₁₆)

\1the text saved by group 1

2nd Alternative(\bperson\b)

Group 2(\bperson\b)

\ban ASCII word boundary

personthe literal text person (case sensitive)

\ban ASCII word boundary

Global pattern flags

g modifier: global. Finds all matches instead of stopping after the first

m modifier: multiline. Causes ^ and $ to match the start and end of each line, not only the start and end of the string

Match Information

Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.

Quick Reference

26 tokens

Regular Expression

(?:\s|^)(['"])(?:\1|.*?[^\\]\1)|(\bperson\b)

New

    obj1 = {
      name: person,
      children: "person's children",
      favoriteQuote: "I am my own person.",
      personality: "fun and personable"
    }
    obj2 = {
      name: person,
      children: 'person\'s children',
    }

Substitution

"Joe"

    obj1 = {
      name: person,
      children: "person's children",
      favoriteQuote: "I am my own person.",
      personality: "fun and personable"
    }
    obj2 = {
      name: person,
      children: 'person\'s children',
    }