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

import java.util.regex.Matcher; import java.util.regex.Pattern; public class Example { public static void main(String[] args) { final String regex = "core\\.\\d*"; final String string = "303488 -rw------- 1 oagmgr oinstall 596971520 May 10 15:54 core.10081 \n" + "271392 -rw------- 1 oagmgr oinstall 543047680 Aug 16 09:59 core.1708 \n" + "310616 -rw------- 1 oagmgr oinstall 621223936 Jul 29 09:05 core.21813 \n" + "261296 -rw------- 1 oagmgr oinstall 524054528 Sep 4 08:29 core.25532 \n" + "292500 -rw------- 1 oagmgr oinstall 469028864 Jun 25 19:45 core.32008 \n" + "291580 -rw------- 1 oagmgr oinstall 600080384 Jul 11 22:08 core.7981 \n" + "365072 -rw------- 1 oagmgr oinstall 484425728 Jun 2 14:08 core.8238 \n\n\n" + " 24 -rw-r--r-- 1 oagmgr oinstall 23606 Aug 16 09:59 hs_err_pid1708.log \n" + " 24 -rw-r--r-- 1 oagmgr oinstall 23436 Apr 4 21:19 hs_err_pid18984.log \n" + " 24 -rw-r--r-- 1 oagmgr oinstall 23421 Sep 4 08:29 hs_err_pid25532.log \n" + " 24 -rw-r--r-- 1 oagmgr oinstall 23497 Jul 11 22:08 hs_err_pid7981.log \n" + " 24 -rw-r--r-- 1 oagmgr oinstall 24080 Jun 2 14:08 hs_err_pid8238.log "; 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