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

`
`
mg

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = '[29.01.18, 23:33] Alice: Ist das hier ein Chatverlauf?\\n[29.01.18, 23:45] Bob: Ja ist es!\\n[29.01.18, 23:45] Bob: Der ist dazu da die funktionsweise des Parsers zu demonstrieren\\n[29.01.18, 23:46] Alice: ‎PTT-20180129-WA0025.opus (Datei angehängt)\\n[29.01.18, 23:46] Bob: Ah, er kann also auch erkennen ob Voicemails gesendet wurden!\\n[29.01.18, 23:46] Bob: Das ist praktisch!\\n[29.01.18, 23:47] Bob: Oder?\\n[29.01.18, 23:47] Alice: ja😄\\n[29.01.18, 23:47] Alice: und Emojis gehen auch!\\n[29.01.18, 23:47] Bob: Was ist mit normalen Smilies?\\n[29.01.18, 23:49] Alice: ‎Keine Ahnung, lass uns das doch mal ausprobieren\\n[29.01.18, 23:50] Bob: Alles klar :) :D\\n[29.01.18, 23:51] Alice: Scheint zu funktionieren!:P\\n[29.01.18, 23:51] Bob: Meinst du, dass URLS auch erkannt werden?\\n[29.01.18, 23:52] Bob: ‎Schick doch mal eine zum ausprobieren!\\n[29.01.18, 23:53] Alice: https://github.com/JuKo007\\n[29.01.18, 23:58] Alice: ‎Scheint zu funktionieren!\\n[29.01.18, 23:59] Alice: Sehr schön!\\n[30.01.18, 00:00] Alice: Damit sollten sich WhatsApp Verläufe besser quantifizieren lassen!\\n[30.01.18, 00:02] Bob: ‎Alles klar, los gehts 😌\\n'; my $regex = qr`(?=\[\d\d.\d\d.\d\d, \d\d:\d\d\])`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