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]
  • Character class intersection
    [\w&&[^\d]]
  • 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
Processing...

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

import re regex = re.compile(r"(?:([-‐‑‒–—―−⁃﹘﹣－])|(?:&(?:(?:#x(2d|201[0-5]|2212|2043|fe58|fe63|ff0d))|(?:#(45|820[89]|821[0123]|8722|8259|65112|65123|65293))|(hyphen|[nm]?dash|hybull|horbar|minus));?))", flags=re.MULTILINE | re.UNICODE) test_str = ("This captures an entity even if it lacks the ';', which is commonly encountered in the wild.\n\n" "kbdash - - &#x2d &#45 -; -\n" "dash ‐ ‐ ‐ &#x2010 &#8208 ‐; ‐\n" "hyphen ‑ ‐ ‑ &#x2011 &#8209 ‑; ‑\n" "figure ‒ ‒ &#x2012 &#8210 ‒; ‒\n" "em – – – &#x2013 &#8211 –; –\n" "en — — — &#x2014 &#8212 —; —\n" "horbar ― ― ― &#x2015 &#8213 ―; ―\n" "minus − − − &#x2212 &#8722 −; −\n" "hybull ⁃ ⁃ ⁃ &#x2043 &#8259 ⁃; ⁃\n" "fe58 ﹘ ﹘ &#xfe58 &#65112 ﹘; ﹘\n" "fe63 ﹣ ﹣ &#xfe63 &#65123 ﹣; ﹣\n" "ff0d － － &#xff0d &#65293 －; －\n\n" "(?:([-‐‑‒–—―−⁃﹘﹣－])|(?:&(?:(?:#x(2d|201[0-5]|2212|2043|fe58|fe63|ff0d))|(?:#(45|820[89]|821[0123]|8722|8259|65112|65123|65293))|(hyphen|[nm]?dash|hybull|horbar|minus));?))") matches = regex.finditer(test_str) for match_num, match in enumerate(matches, start=1): print(f"Match {match_num} was found at {match.start()}-{match.end()}: {match.group()}") for group_num, group in enumerate(match.groups(), start=1): print(f"Group {group_num} found at {match.start(group_num)}-{match.end(group_num)}: {group}")

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 Python, please visit: https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html