Regular Expressions 101

Save & Share

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

/
/
gmui

Test String

Code Generator

Generated Code

import java.util.regex.Matcher; import java.util.regex.Pattern; public class Example { public static void main(String[] args) { final String regex = "(?:[^\\p{Script=Latin}\\s\\w;:.,\\-[\\]()\\{\\}'\"+\\/=<>])\\B|(?:(?:[\\p{Script=Latin}]|[^\\s\\w;:.,\\-[\\]()\\{\\}'\"+\\/=<>]){2,}(?:(?:[\\p{Script=Latin}]|[^\\s\\w+.,–:;\\/\\\\=<>])?(?:[\\p{Script=Latin}]|[^\\s\\w;\\-:.,\\[\\]()\\{\\}'\"+\\/\\\\=<>]))*)|(?:(?:[0-9\\p{Script=Latin}]|[^\\s\\w;:.,[\\]()\\{\\}\\-'\"+\\/\\\\=<>])(?:(?:[0-9\\p{Script=Latin}]|[^\\s\\w+\\-:;\\/\\\\=<>])?(?:[0-9\\p{Script=Latin}]|[^\\s\\w;:.,\\-[\\]()\\{\\}'\"+\\/\\\\=<>]))*)"; final String string = "Bão Yagi (được Việt Nam định danh là bão số 3, được phía Philippines đặt tên bão Enteng - tiếng Anh: Severe Tropical Storm Enteng , nguyên văn 'Bão nhiệt đới dữ dội Enteng')\n\n" + "Some legal \"[d]ocuments\" contain corrected spel[l]ing, gram(m)ar, or simple typos; and lots of references[1]. By Extension, I included curl{e}y brackets, but not tag brack<e>ts, which are not seenin modern legal documents.\n\n" + "These.are.properly.separated.even.U.S.A., and multiple punctuations are properly ignored.\n\n" + "A. Multiple\n" + "B. Choices\n\n" + "-ABC-DEF-\n" + "-A-B-C-D-\n" + "-1-2-3-4-\n" + "-test-\n\n" + ".ABC.DEF.\n" + ".AB.CD.EF.D.\n" + ".A.B.C.D.E.\n" + ".123.456.789.\n" + ".12.34.56.78.\n" + ".1.2.3.4.\n\n" + "cod3 var1aBl3s\n" + "test.U.S.A.test\n\n" + "We'd want hyphenated words in cases when large words are broken for wrapping in tight column news papers/megazines, while we can still properly separate numbers such as \"30-35 pages\".\n\n" + "Non-Latin character are separated per character:\n" + "出典: フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』\n" + "ウィキペディアには現在この名前の項目はありません。\n\n" + "Acceptable failed cases:\n\n" + "- [E]xpected: \"[\" is considered external \"wrapper/enclosure\", while the internal \"wrappers\" are included so that they can be further processed/removed in the future.\n\n" + "- test.U.S.A.test: this happens when no space trailing textContents of a block-level elemetn in HTML files.\n\n" + "- 『ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』: mixed languages\n\n" + "- CamelCasing s not separated, but can be easily separated in \"post-processing step, even though _snake_casing_ works fine by happenstance.\n\n" + "-cod3 var1aBl3s: mixing letters and numbers. It's not intentional, but not a big deal when the side-effect is new word is always started with a number."; final Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex, Pattern.MULTILINE | Pattern.UNICODE_CASE | Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE); final Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(string); while (matcher.find()) { System.out.println("Full match: " + matcher.group(0)); for (int i = 1; i <= matcher.groupCount(); i++) { System.out.println("Group " + i + ": " + matcher.group(i)); } } } }

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 Java, please visit: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html