Regular Expressions 101

Save & Share

  • Regex Version: ver. 3
  • Update Regex
    ctrl+⇧+s
  • Save new Regex
    ctrl+s
  • Add to Community Library

Flavor

  • PCRE2 (PHP >=7.3)
  • PCRE (PHP <7.3)
  • ECMAScript (JavaScript)
  • Python
  • Golang
  • Java 8
  • .NET 7.0 (C#)
  • Rust
  • Regex Flavor Guide

Function

  • Match
  • Substitution
  • List
  • Unit Tests

Tools

Sponsors
There are currently no sponsors. Become a sponsor today!
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

$re = '/[ (](([0-9] )?[\w]+ [0-9]{1,2}:[0-9]{1,2})[;)]/m'; $str = 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, sea persius nonumes habemus cu. Eam ferri dicta ex, sit no torquatos reprimique. Ea tota democritum has, mel libris audiam voluptaria cu. Ex usu facer voluptatibus, nam ut commune democritum. Ea nonumes (1 John 3:1) recteque sapientem eum. Cum soleat mandamus te, (Matthew 6:6) eos affert volutpat et. Quo ei iracundia consectetuer. Vim salutatus abhorreant at, quo ea postea equidem intellegam. Duo dicit cotidieque id, debitis noluisse fabellas sit eu. Qui ne integre patrioque, minimum inciderint eos ex, aliquando (Deuteronomy 10:18; Psalm 10:14) tincidunt intellegat est at. Sumo assum et nec, usu graecis adversarium te, cu mea quis lorem. In qui utroque propriae, ex mandamus argumentum vis, pro vidisse ceteros atomorum ex. Et mentitum referrentur'; preg_match_all($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