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

/
/
mg

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/\[\d{2}\.\d{2}\.\d{2}\s\d{2}\:\d{2}\:\d{2}\:\d{1,3}\sMET\].+The Application\s([a-zA-Z0-9]*)\sis starting\.[\s\S]*\[\d{2}\.\d{2}\.\d{2}\s\d{2}\:\d{2}\:\d{2}\:\d{1,3}\sMET\].+The Application started:\s\1/m'; $str = '[10.12.19 15:29:10:408 MET] 0000006a ApplicationMg A WSVR0200I: The Application query is starting. [10.12.19 15:29:11:102 MET] 0000006a CompositionUn A WSVR0191I: Composition unit AB started [10.12.19 15:29:11:222 MET] 0000006a CompositionUn A WSVR0191I: Composition unit CD started [10.12.19 15:29:11:412 MET] 0000006a ApplicationMg A WSVR0200I: The Application tracer is starting. [10.12.19 15:29:12:108 MET] 0000006a CompositionUn A WSVR0191I: Composition unit DE started. [10.12.19 15:29:12:541 MET] 0000006a ApplicationMg A WSVR0200I: The Application started: query [10.12.19 15:29:13:417 MET] 0000006a ApplicationMg A WSVR0200I: The Application started: tracer [10.12.19 15:30:12:145 MET] 0000006a ApplicationMg A WSVR0200I: The Application test is starting. [10.12.19 15:30:13:408 MET] 0000006a CompositionUn A WSVR0191I: Composition unit XY started. [10.12.19 15:30:14:678 MET] 0000006a ApplicationMg A WSVR0200I: The Application started: test'; preg_match_all($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