Regular Expressions 101

Save & Share

  • Regex Version: ver. 2
  • Update Regex
    ctrl+⇧+s
  • Save new Regex
    ctrl+s
  • Add to Community Library

Flavor

  • PCRE2 (PHP >=7.3)
  • PCRE (PHP <7.3)
  • ECMAScript (JavaScript)
  • Python
  • Golang
  • Java 8
  • .NET 7.0 (C#)
  • Rust
  • Regex Flavor Guide

Function

  • Match
  • Substitution
  • List
  • Unit Tests

Tools

Sponsors
There are currently no sponsors. Become a sponsor today!
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

/
/
g

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/<meta (?:name|http-equiv)=\'(.*)\' content=\'(.*)\'>/'; $str = '<meta charset=\'UTF-8\'> <meta name=\'keywords\' content=\'your, tags\'> <meta name=\'description\' content=\'150 words\'> <meta name=\'subject\' content=\'your website\'s subject\'> <meta name=\'copyright\' content=\'company name\'> <meta name=\'language\' content=\'ES\'> <meta name=\'robots\' content=\'index,follow\'> <meta name=\'revised\' content=\'Sunday, July 18th, 2010, 5:15 pm\'> <meta name=\'abstract\' content=\'\'> <meta name=\'topic\' content=\'\'> <meta name=\'summary\' content=\'\'> <meta name=\'Classification\' content=\'Business\'> <meta name=\'author\' content=\'name, email@hotmail.com\'> <meta name=\'designer\' content=\'\'> <meta name=\'reply-to\' content=\'email@hotmail.com\'> <meta name=\'owner\' content=\'\'> <meta name=\'url\' content=\'http://www.websiteaddrress.com\'> <meta name=\'identifier-URL\' content=\'http://www.websiteaddress.com\'> <meta name=\'directory\' content=\'submission\'> <meta name=\'pagename\' content=\'jQuery Tools, Tutorials and Resources - O\'Reilly Media\'> <meta name=\'category\' content=\'\'> <meta name=\'coverage\' content=\'Worldwide\'> <meta name=\'distribution\' content=\'Global\'> <meta name=\'rating\' content=\'General\'> <meta name=\'revisit-after\' content=\'7 days\'> <meta name=\'subtitle\' content=\'This is my subtitle\'> <meta name=\'target\' content=\'all\'> <meta name=\'HandheldFriendly\' content=\'True\'> <meta name=\'MobileOptimized\' content=\'320\'> <meta name=\'date\' content=\'Sep. 27, 2010\'> <meta name=\'search_date\' content=\'2010-09-27\'> <meta name=\'DC.title\' content=\'Unstoppable Robot Ninja\'> <meta name=\'ResourceLoaderDynamicStyles\' content=\'\'> <meta name=\'medium\' content=\'blog\'> <meta name=\'syndication-source\' content=\'https://mashable.com/2008/12/24/free-brand-monitoring-tools/\'> <meta name=\'original-source\' content=\'https://mashable.com/2008/12/24/free-brand-monitoring-tools/\'> <meta name=\'verify-v1\' content=\'dV1r/ZJJdDEI++fKJ6iDEl6o+TMNtSu0kv18ONeqM0I=\'> <meta name=\'y_key\' content=\'1e39c508e0d87750\'> <meta name=\'pageKey\' content=\'guest-home\'> <meta itemprop=\'name\' content=\'jQTouch\'> <meta http-equiv=\'Expires\' content=\'0\'> <meta http-equiv=\'Pragma\' content=\'no-cache\'> <meta http-equiv=\'Cache-Control\' content=\'no-cache\'> <meta http-equiv=\'imagetoolbar\' content=\'no\'> <meta http-equiv=\'x-dns-prefetch-control\' content=\'off\'>'; preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0); // Print the entire match result var_dump($matches);

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 PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php