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

$re = '/^(\[\^)([^\]\s\p{C}]+)(\])\ (\P{C}*(?:\n(?!\n[\[\n])\P{C}*)*)/m'; $str = 'Pseudo-example: Sentence of the first [^a]paragraph. Sentence[^b] of the first[^b] paragraph[^1]. Sentence of the first[^1] paragraph. Sentence[^1] of the first paragraph. Sentence of the first paragraph. Sentence of the first paragraph. Sentence of the first paragraph. [^a] Sentence of a long margin note\'s body that refers to the word "paragraph". [^1] Sentence of the first paragraph of the footnote. Sentence of the first paragraph of the footnote. Sentence of the first paragraph of the footnote. Sentence of the first paragraph of the footnote. Sentence of the second paragraph of the footnote. Sentence of the second paragraph of the footnote. Sentence of the second paragraph of the footnote. Sentence of the second paragraph of the footnote. Sentence of the third and the last paragraph of the footnote and two empty lines after it! Sentence[^1] of the second paragraph. Sentence of the second paragraph. Sentence of the second paragraph. Sentence of the second paragraph. Sentence of the second paragraph. Sentence of the second paragraph. Sentence of the second paragraph. [^b] Footnote at the end of the file. Footnote at the end of the file. Footnote at the end of the file.'; preg_match_all($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