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

/
/
i

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/^[^]*?`{3}(?:json)?\n(.*[^]*?)\n`{3}[^]*?$/i'; $str = '```json [ { "questionType": "singleselect", "shortDescription": "Who will own the Intellectual Property rights developed during the provision of services?", "fullDescription": "According to the agreement, who will own the Intellectual Property rights developed during the provision of services?", "options": [ "The Consultant", "The Client", "Both parties" ] }, { "questionType": "multipleselect", "shortDescription": "What are included in Intellectual Property rights according to the agreement?", "fullDescription": "What are included in Intellectual Property rights according to the agreement? (Select all that apply)", "options": [ "Patents", "Design", "Trademark", "Know-how", "Trade secrets", "Other" ] }, { "questionType": "textinput", "shortDescription": "What rights does the Client have regarding the projects and products resulting from the services?", "fullDescription": "What specific rights does the Client have regarding the projects and products resulting from the services?", "options": [] } ] ```'; preg_match($re, $str, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE, 0); // Print the entire match result var_dump($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