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

/
/
s

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

# coding=utf8 # the above tag defines encoding for this document and is for Python 2.x compatibility import re regex = r"\n\/\+\s*dub\.(sdl|json):?\n(.*)\n\+\/\n" test_str = ("#!/usr/bin/env dub\n" "/**\n" " * Copyright (C) blah blah blah\n" " * Some long copyright notice\n" " * Some long copyright notice\n" " * Some long copyright notice\n" " * Some long copyright notice\n" " * Some long copyright notice\n" " * Some long copyright notice\n" " * Some long copyright notice\n" " * Some long copyright notice\n" "*/\n" "/+\n" "// Example and/or documentation on changing this program\n" "Some codeSome codeSome codeSome code\n" "Some codeSome codeSome codeSome code\n" "/*\n" " * Note that when doing the below !not threadsafe!...\n" " * see next example for threadsafe version.\n" " */\n" "Some codeSome codeSome codeSome code\n" "Some codeSome codeSome codeSome code\n" "Some codeSome codeSome codeSome code\n" "Some codeSome codeSome codeSome code\n" "/*\n" " * This is the threadsafe version of above both are provided.\n" " * threadsafe version is not quite as fast\n" " */\n" "Some codeSome codeSome codeSome code\n" "Some codeSome codeSome codeSome code // this line has to be here\n" "Some codeSome codeSome codeSome code\n\n" "+/\n\n" "/+ dub.sdl:\n" " name \"colortest\"\n" " dependency \"color\" version=\"~>0.0.3\"\n" "+/\n\n" "// implementation of support functions\n\n" "void main(string[] args) {\n" "...\n" "}\n\n") matches = re.search(regex, test_str, re.DOTALL) if matches: print ("Match was found at {start}-{end}: {match}".format(start = matches.start(), end = matches.end(), match = matches.group())) for groupNum in range(0, len(matches.groups())): groupNum = groupNum + 1 print ("Group {groupNum} found at {start}-{end}: {group}".format(groupNum = groupNum, start = matches.start(groupNum), end = matches.end(groupNum), group = matches.group(groupNum))) # Note: for Python 2.7 compatibility, use ur"" to prefix the regex and u"" to prefix the test string and substitution.

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