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
  • Match everything enclosed
    (?:...)
  • Capture everything enclosed
    (...)
  • 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

/
/

Test String

Code Generator

Generated Code

package main import ( "regexp" "fmt" ) func main() { var re = regexp.MustCompile(`(?xsm) # free-spacing mode, DOTALL, multi-line (?=.*?blue) # if blue isn't there, fail without delay ###### Recursive Section ###### # This section aims to balance empty lines with digits, i.e. # emptyLine,emptyLine,emptyLine ... ~1~2~3 # The last digit block is captured to Group 2, e.g. ~3 (?= # lookahead ( # Group 1 (?: # skip one line that doesn't contain blue ^ # start of line (?:(?!blue)[^\r\n])* # zero or more chars not followed by blue (?:\r?\n) # newline ) (?:(?1)|[^~]+) # recurse Group 1 OR match all non-tilde chars (~\d+) # match a sequence of digits )? # End Group 1 ) # End lookahead. # Group 2, if set, now contains the number of lines skipped .*? # lazily match chars up to... blue # match blue .*? # lazily match chars up to... (?(2)\2) # if Group 2 is set, match Group 2 ~ # Match the next tilde \K # drop what was matched so far \d+ # match the next digits: this is the match `) var str = `Paint it white Paint it black Why not blue? Or red or brown? ~1~2~3~4~5~6~7~8~9~10` if len(re.FindStringIndex(str)) > 0 { fmt.Println(re.FindString(str),"found at index",re.FindStringIndex(str)[0]) } }

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 Golang, please visit: https://golang.org/pkg/regexp/