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

# coding=utf8 # the above tag defines encoding for this document and is for Python 2.x compatibility import re regex = r"^(?<name>[^.,?;:\s]+)$|^(?:(?<honorific>(?:mrs?|ms|dr|prof|rev|hon)\.?|miss|sir|dame|lord|lady)\s+)?(?:(?<given_name>(?<first_name>[^.,?;:\s]+\.?)(?:\s+(?<middle_name>(?:[^.,?;:\s]+\.?)(?:\s+[^.,?;:\s]+\.?)*?))??)\s+)??(?:(?<family_name>(?:(?:(?:(?:a|ab|af|ap|abu|aït|al|ālam|at|ath|aust|austre|bar|bath|bat|ben|bin|ibn|bet|bint|da|das|de la|degli|del|dele|della|der|di|dos|du|e|el|fetch|vetch|fitz|i|ka|kil|gil|la|le|lille|lu|m'|mac|mc|mck|mhic|mic|mala|mellom|myljom|na|ณ|ned|nedre|neder|ngā|nic|ní|nin|nord|norr|ny|o|ó|ua|uí|opp|upp|öfver|ost|öst|öster|øst|østre|över|øvste|øvre|øver|öz|pour|putra|putera|putri|puteri|setia|setya|stor|söder|sør|sønder|syd|søndre|syndre|søre|te|ter|ter|tre|van|van de|van den|van der|van het|van 't|väst|väster|verch|erch|vest|vestre|vesle|vetle|von|war|zu|von und zu)\s)?[^.,!?;:\s]+)-)?(?:(?:a|ab|af|ap|abu|aït|al|ālam|at|ath|aust|austre|bar|bath|bat|ben|bin|ibn|bet|bint|da|das|de la|degli|del|dele|della|der|di|dos|du|e|el|fetch|vetch|fitz|i|ka|kil|gil|la|le|lille|lu|m'|mac|mc|mck|mhic|mic|mala|mellom|myljom|na|ณ|ned|nedre|neder|ngā|nic|ní|nin|nord|norr|ny|o|ó|ua|uí|opp|upp|öfver|ost|öst|öster|øst|østre|över|øvste|øvre|øver|öz|pour|putra|putera|putri|puteri|setia|setya|stor|söder|sør|sønder|syd|søndre|syndre|søre|te|ter|ter|tre|van|van de|van den|van der|van het|van 't|väst|väster|verch|erch|vest|vestre|vesle|vetle|von|war|zu|von und zu)\s+)?[^.,?;:\s]+)??(?:,?\s+(?<suffix>Sr\.?|Snr|Jr\.?|Jnr|[IVX]+))?)?(?<post_nominal>,.*)?$" test_str = ("John Doe\n" "Mary Jane Smith\n" "Jean-Luc van der Berg, Sr.\n" "Maria de la Cruz\n" "Mohamed bin Ahmed al-Farsi\n" "Anna-Nicole Johnson Jr.\n" "Carlos Alberto dos Santos\n" "Sophie von und zu Rhein\n" "Li Na\n" "O'Connor Fitzpatrick III\n" "Yusuf ibn Abdullah\n" "Emma-Louise O'Reilly\n" "Juan Carlos de la Torre\n" "Fatima bint Mohammed\n" "Hans-Christian Andersen\n" "Elena di Matteo\n" "Abdul-Rahman al-Hashimi\n" "Isabella della Rovere\n" "Jean-Pierre Dupont, Jr\n" "Sara van den Berg\n" "John Q. Public\n" "Dr. Jane Doe, PhD\n" "Prof. John Smith, MD\n" "Mr. James Walter Thomas Jr.\n" "Ms. Emily Davis, CPA\n" "Dr. Michael David Jacob Brown, DDS\n" "Mrs. Sarah Wilson, RN\n" "Rev. Thomas Anderson, DD\n" "Mr. Adams\n" "T'Challa\n" "ǃXóõ ǁKaru\n" "ǃHõã ǂNuka\n" "J. K. Rowling\n" "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt") matches = re.finditer(regex, test_str, re.MULTILINE | re.IGNORECASE) for matchNum, match in enumerate(matches, start=1): print ("Match {matchNum} was found at {start}-{end}: {match}".format(matchNum = matchNum, start = match.start(), end = match.end(), match = match.group())) for groupNum in range(0, len(match.groups())): groupNum = groupNum + 1 print ("Group {groupNum} found at {start}-{end}: {group}".format(groupNum = groupNum, start = match.start(groupNum), end = match.end(groupNum), group = match.group(groupNum))) # Note: for Python 2.7 compatibility, use ur"" to prefix the regex and u"" to prefix the test string and substitution.

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 Python, please visit: https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html