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

/
/
gmx

Test String

Substitution

Processing...

Code Generator

Generated Code

#include <MsgBoxConstants.au3> ; to declare the Constants of MsgBox Local $sRegex = "(?mx)([ :]) # look for : and space as possible leading characters" & @CRLF & _ "([\"]?) # if there's a quote, disregard it" & @CRLF & _ "([0-9]{4}) # find the year" & @CRLF & _ "- # find the 1st dash" & @CRLF & _ "( # Group (4)" & @CRLF & _ " (" & @CRLF & _ " ((0[13578] | (10|12)) # look for 31 day months" & @CRLF & _ " - # followed by the 2nd dash" & @CRLF & _ " (0[1-9]|[1-2][0-9]|3[0-1]) # and accept days up to 31" & @CRLF & _ " ) " & @CRLF & _ " | # OR... " & @CRLF & _ " (02 # look for Feb" & @CRLF & _ " - # followed by the 2nd dash" & @CRLF & _ " (0[1-9]|[1-2][0-9])) # and accept up to 29 days" & @CRLF & _ " | # OR..." & @CRLF & _ " ((0[469]|11)) # look for 30 day months" & @CRLF & _ " - # followed by the 2nd dash" & @CRLF & _ " ((0[1-9]|[1-2][0-9]|30)) # and accept up to 30 days" & @CRLF & _ " )" & @CRLF & _ ") # closes (4)" & @CRLF & _ "([\"]?)([ \"]?)(\s)" Local $sString = "This regex changes YYYY-MM-DD to "[[YYYY-MM-DD]]" for Obsidian" & @CRLF & _ "WORKS ON:" & @CRLF & _ "today: 2025-03-14" & @CRLF & _ "birthdays: 1966-06-19" & @CRLF & _ "Good Dates: 2022-12-31 and 2025-02-08" & @CRLF & _ "old-dates: 1492-01-01 old dates could be an issue, depends on how you use your vault!" & @CRLF & _ "no space after colon is ok:2023-07-08" & @CRLF & _ "standing alone and quoted is fine: "2021-02-28"" & @CRLF & _ "IGNORES:" & @CRLF & _ "my template version number has dots for separators (skip): 2025.12.02" & @CRLF & _ "No leading whitespace is questionable?2023-06-08" & @CRLF & _ "existing links (no leading : or space):" & @CRLF & _ " - [[2025-01-01]]" & @CRLF & _ "- [2025-01-01](https:123.com)" & @CRLF & _ " - "[[2023-11-30]]"" & @CRLF & _ " - [["2024-06-05"]]" & @CRLF & _ "Not YYYY-MM-DD dates:- 2022-1-1 Euro date: 2022-31-12 or slashes: 2021/09/15" & @CRLF & _ "Bad date for month: 2022-02-30 2022-04-31 2022-06-31 2022-11-31 2022-03-32" & @CRLF & _ "Don't match serial numbers: 2015-12-3135-89" & @CRLF & _ "" Local $sSubst = "$1"[[$3-$4]]"$18" Local $sResult = StringRegExpReplace($sString, $sRegex, $sSubst) MsgBox($MB_SYSTEMMODAL, "Result", $sResult)

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