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

use strict; my $str = 'regex pattern("012[3-9^6]\\\\d{7}"); regex email("([\\\\w!#$%&\'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+\\\\.?[\\\\w!#$%&\'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)+@(\\\\w+(\\\\-\\\\w+)?(\\\\.\\\\w+))+"); regex phoneNumber("((\\\\+84)|0)[1-9][0-9]{8,9}"); regex urlAddress("(http|https|ftp)://[\\\\w\\\\.]+([-\\\\w\\\\.]+)?(:\\\\d+)?([/\\\\w]+)?"); regex email("([\\\\w_-]+(\\\\.?[\\\\w_-]))+@[\\\\w]+([_\\\\w]+)?(\\\\.[\\\\w]+)+"); regex ipAddress("((25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[1-9][0-9]|[0-9])\\\\.){3}(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}| [1-9][0-9]|[0-9])"); regex images("[a-zA-Z0-9\\\\_\\\\.]+\\\\.?[a-zA-Z0-9\\\\_]+\\\\.(([jJ][pP][gG])|([pP][nN][gG])|([gG][iI][fF]))"); regex docs("[a-zA-Z0-9\\\\_\\\\.]+\\\\.?[a-zA-Z0-9\\\\_]+\\\\.(([pP][dD][f|])|([dD][oO][cC])|([pP]{2}[tT][xX]))"); regex media("[a-zA-Z0-9\\\\_\\\\.]+\\\\.?[a-zA-Z0-9\\\\_]+\\\\.(([m|M][p|P][3|4])|([a|A][v|V][i|I]))"); regex ipAttack("\\\\d+\\\\ \\\\d+\\\\.\\\\d+(\\\\ ((25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[1-9][0-9]|[0-9])\\\\.){3} (25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[1-9][0-9]|[0-9])){2}\\\\ [A-Z]+\\\\ \\\\d+ [A-Z]+\\\\ [\\\\w-+/?=&.: ]+"); '; my $regex = qr/Common Regex/mp; 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