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

Generated Code

import java.util.regex.Matcher; import java.util.regex.Pattern; public class Example { public static void main(String[] args) { final String regex = "^(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|[0-9]), (25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|[0-9]), (25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|[0-9])$"; final String string = "Min val is 0. Leading zeros don't \n" + "match unless the value is 0.\n" + "0, 0, 0\n" + "00, 0, 0\n" + "0, 0, 00\n\n" + "Max numeric number is 255, anything \n" + "larger than 255 will not match.\n" + "255, 255, 255\n" + "255, 255, 256\n\n" + "4-Digit numbers will not match\n" + "1, 11, 111\n" + "11, 111, 1111\n\n" + "dangling commas do not match\n" + "45, 67, 89\n" + "45, 67, 89,\n\n" + "Obviously if a dangling comma doesn't \n" + "match, neither will 4 numbers.\n" + "1, 2, 3\n" + "1, 2, 3, 4\n\n" + "Two numbers do not match, and adding a space,\n" + "or space & comma, doesn't match either.\n" + "0, 1, 2\n" + "0, 1\n" + "0, 1,\n" + "0, 1, \n\n" + "Single numbers do not match; adding a space &/or\n" + "comma, will not cause the single number to match.\n" + "9, 9, 9\n" + "9\n" + "9,\n" + "9, "; final Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex, Pattern.MULTILINE); final Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(string); while (matcher.find()) { System.out.println("Full match: " + matcher.group(0)); for (int i = 1; i <= matcher.groupCount(); i++) { System.out.println("Group " + i + ": " + matcher.group(i)); } } } }

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 Java, please visit: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html