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

/
/
gimx

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = 'Host test Hostname test.domain.com User james Port 22 # Comment IdentityFile ~/.ssh/key.pub # With 2 aliases Host test2 test-2 Hostname test2.domain.com User = james Port=22 # Port 23 IdentityFile = ~/.ssh/key2.pub # For all hosts except test2, activate compression and set log level: Host * !test2 Compression yes LogLevel INFO IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa Host *.sweet.home Hostname 192.168.2.17 User tom IdentityFile "~/.ssh/id tom.pub" # If has spaces, then quote it. # With a lot of spaces between lines Host localhost Hostname 127.0.0.* IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa # Without empty lines between Host definitions: Host dummy Hostname ssh.dummy.com User user Host dummy2 Hostname ssh.dummy2.com User user'; my $regex = qr/# Host entry: # Start of line followed by optional horizontal spaces, # The word "Host" case-insensitive, followed by anything (captured) and a new line. ^[\t  ]*host[\t  ]+(.+?)[\t  ]*\n # A configuration line or comment, multiple times: (?: # Negative lookahead to avoid matching a new "Host" entry, but # also with optional comment lines before it. (?!(?:^[\t  ]*\#.*\n)*[\t  ]*host\b) # Optional horizontal spaces. [\t  ]* # Config line, comment or empty line (done with the ? at the end). (?: # A) A config line, capturing it (with space or equal sign). (\w+)\b(?:[\t  ]*=[\t  ]*|[\t  ]+)(.*) | # B) Or a comment. \#.* )? # New line or end of the config file. (?:\n|\Z) )+/imxp; 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