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
Processing...

Test String

Code Generator

Generated Code

#include <StringConstants.au3> ; to declare the Constants of StringRegExp #include <Array.au3> ; UDF needed for _ArrayDisplay and _ArrayConcatenate Local $sRegex = "(?mx)(?(DEFINE)" & @CRLF & _ " (?<marker>\b[A-Z][-\w]*\b)" & @CRLF & _ " (?<ws>[\ \t]+)" & @CRLF & _ " (?<needle>\b(?:Study|Test))" & @CRLF & _ "" & @CRLF & _ " (?<pre>(?:(?&marker)(?&ws))+)" & @CRLF & _ " (?<post>(?:(?&ws)(?&marker))+)" & @CRLF & _ "" & @CRLF & _ " (?<before>(?&pre)(?&needle))" & @CRLF & _ " (?<after>(?&needle)(?&post))" & @CRLF & _ " (?<both>(?&pre)(?&needle)(?&post))" & @CRLF & _ ")" & @CRLF & _ "" & @CRLF & _ "(?&both)|(?&before)|(?&after)" Local $sString = "" & @CRLF & _ "" & @CRLF & _ "I have been analyzing large amounts of text data. This is what I got so far:" & @CRLF & _ "" & @CRLF & _ "(([A-Z][\w-]*)+\s+(\b(Study|Test)\b)(\s[A-Z][\w-]*)*)|(\b(Study|Test)\b)(\s[A-Z][\w-]*)+" & @CRLF & _ "" & @CRLF & _ "Types of phrases I would like to capture:" & @CRLF & _ "" & @CRLF & _ " Europe National Longitudinal Study" & @CRLF & _ " Longitudinal Study" & @CRLF & _ " Study Initiative" & @CRLF & _ " Longitudinal Study Initiative" & @CRLF & _ "" & @CRLF & _ "I want to capture the word 'Study' or 'Test' ONLY if it is surrounded by the words starting with a capital letter. The ideal regex would achieve all of this + it would ignore\escape certain words like 'of' or 'the'." & @CRLF & _ "" & @CRLF & _ " *the above regex is super slow with the str.findall function, I guess there must be a better solution" & @CRLF & _ " ** I used https://regex101.com for testing and then run it in Jupyter, Python 3" & @CRLF & _ "" & @CRLF & _ "" Local $aArray = StringRegExp($sString, $sRegex, $STR_REGEXPARRAYGLOBALFULLMATCH) Local $aFullArray[0] For $i = 0 To UBound($aArray) -1 _ArrayConcatenate($aFullArray, $aArray[$i]) Next $aArray = $aFullArray ; Present the entire match result _ArrayDisplay($aArray, "Result")

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 AutoIt, please visit: https://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/docs/functions/StringRegExp.htm