Regular Expressions 101

Pro

^start of line

Non-Capturing Group(?:(.*?):)?

?repeats the group contents below at most once:

Group 1(.*?)

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

:the literal : (58₁₀ / 72₈ / 3A₁₆)

*the literal (32₁₀ / 40₈ / 20₁₆) , repeated any number of times

Group 2(\S+)

\S+any character that is not Unicode whitespace, repeated at least once

Non-Capturing Group(?: +(\S.*))?

?repeats the group contents below at most once:

+the literal (32₁₀ / 40₈ / 20₁₆) , repeated at least once

Group 3(\S.*)

\Sany character that is not Unicode whitespace

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

$end of line

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

Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.

25 tokens

^(?:(.*?):)? *(\S+)(?: +(\S.*))?$

L A B12 E4L-0: TEXT1 TEXT 2 HEL-L!O!!!
TEXT1 TEXT 2 HEL-L!O!!!
L A B12 E4L-0: TEXT1
TEXT

L A B12 E4L-0: TEXT1 TEXT 2 HEL-L!O!!!
TEXT1 TEXT 2 HEL-L!O!!!
L A B12 E4L-0: TEXT1
TEXT