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

/
/
gm

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/.?\[.+/m'; $str = '[Verse 1] All I learned growing up was that love chewed me up Spit me out on the pavement next to the cuts And the blood that my mum and dad would Always take out on each other Only thing that I knew that a love could lead me to Was protecting my sisters from all the cuts And the blood that my mum and dad would Always take out on each other [Pre-Chorus] Sweetheart, you are Changing my mind Sweetheart, you are Changing my mind [Chorus] Nobody taught me how to love myself So how can I love somebody else? There ain\'t no excuses I swеar that I\'m doing my best Nobody taught me how to love mysеlf So how can I love somebody else? I\'m so new to this I swear that I\'m doing my best [Post-Chorus] I won\'t let you down I won\'t let you down [Verse 2] Standing there, you look at me Understanding everything Yeah, it\'s so fascinating You patch up the blood and the cuts But our blood got mixed up So I guess we belong to each other [Pre-Chorus] Sweetheart, you are Changing my mind Sweetheart, you are Changing my mind [Chorus] Nobody taught me how to love myself So how can I love somebody else? There ain\'t no excuses I swear that I\'m doing my best Nobody taught me how to love myself So how can I love somebody else? I\'m so new to this I swear that I\'m doing my best [Bridge] They will try to pay for me to erase all the memories But I can\'t When you shine so bright in a spotless mind Someone gets left behind [Chorus] Nobody taught me how to love myself So how can I love somebody else? There ain\'t no excuses I swear that I\'m doing my best Nobody taught me how to love myself So how can I love somebody else? I\'m so new to this I swear that I\'m doing my best [Outro] I won\'t let you down I won\'t let you down I won\'t let you down I won\'t let you down <span jsname'; preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0); // Print the entire match result var_dump($matches);

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 PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php