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

/
/
gmi

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = 'John Doe Mary Jane Smith Jean-Luc van der Berg, Sr. Maria de la Cruz Mohamed bin Ahmed al-Farsi Anna-Nicole Johnson Jr. Carlos Alberto dos Santos Sophie von und zu Rhein Li Na O\'Connor Fitzpatrick III Yusuf ibn Abdullah Emma-Louise O\'Reilly Juan Carlos de la Torre Fatima bint Mohammed Hans-Christian Andersen Elena di Matteo Abdul-Rahman al-Hashimi Isabella della Rovere Jean-Pierre Dupont, Jr Sara van den Berg John Q. Public Dr. Jane Doe, PhD Prof. John Smith, MD Mr. James Walter Thomas Jr. Ms. Emily Davis, CPA Dr. Michael David Jacob Brown, DDS Mrs. Sarah Wilson, RN Rev. Thomas Anderson, DD Mr. Adams T\'Challa ǃXóõ ǁKaru ǃHõã ǂNuka J. K. Rowling John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt'; my $regex = qr/^(?<name>[^.,?;:\s]+)$|^(?:(?<honorific>(?:mrs?|ms|dr|prof|rev|hon)\.?|miss|sir|dame|lord|lady)\s+)?(?:(?<given_name>(?<first_name>[^.,?;:\s]+\.?)(?:\s+(?<middle_name>(?:[^.,?;:\s]+\.?)(?:\s+[^.,?;:\s]+\.?)*?))??)\s+)??(?:(?<family_name>(?:(?:(?:(?:a|ab|af|ap|abu|aït|al|ālam|at|ath|aust|austre|bar|bath|bat|ben|bin|ibn|bet|bint|da|das|de la|degli|del|dele|della|der|di|dos|du|e|el|fetch|vetch|fitz|i|ka|kil|gil|la|le|lille|lu|m'|mac|mc|mck|mhic|mic|mala|mellom|myljom|na|ณ|ned|nedre|neder|ngā|nic|ní|nin|nord|norr|ny|o|ó|ua|uí|opp|upp|öfver|ost|öst|öster|øst|østre|över|øvste|øvre|øver|öz|pour|putra|putera|putri|puteri|setia|setya|stor|söder|sør|sønder|syd|søndre|syndre|søre|te|ter|ter|tre|van|van de|van den|van der|van het|van 't|väst|väster|verch|erch|vest|vestre|vesle|vetle|von|war|zu|von und zu)\s)?[^.,!?;:\s]+)-)?(?:(?:a|ab|af|ap|abu|aït|al|ālam|at|ath|aust|austre|bar|bath|bat|ben|bin|ibn|bet|bint|da|das|de la|degli|del|dele|della|der|di|dos|du|e|el|fetch|vetch|fitz|i|ka|kil|gil|la|le|lille|lu|m'|mac|mc|mck|mhic|mic|mala|mellom|myljom|na|ณ|ned|nedre|neder|ngā|nic|ní|nin|nord|norr|ny|o|ó|ua|uí|opp|upp|öfver|ost|öst|öster|øst|østre|över|øvste|øvre|øver|öz|pour|putra|putera|putri|puteri|setia|setya|stor|söder|sør|sønder|syd|søndre|syndre|søre|te|ter|ter|tre|van|van de|van den|van der|van het|van 't|väst|väster|verch|erch|vest|vestre|vesle|vetle|von|war|zu|von und zu)\s+)?[^.,?;:\s]+)??(?:,?\s+(?<suffix>Sr\.?|Snr|Jr\.?|Jnr|[IVX]+))?)?(?<post_nominal>,.*)?$/mip; 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