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

/
/
g

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = '"error":"invalid_grant","error_description":"authentication failure"}" [WARN ] 2016-06-15 17:55:03,835 ajp-bio-8009-exec-147: failed to unmarshall the body of the response: {"error":"invalid_grant","error_description":"authentication failure"} javax.xml.bind.UnmarshalException - with linked exception: [org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; lineNumber: 1; columnNumber: 1; Content is not allowed in prolog.] at javax.xml.bind.helpers.AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.createUnmarshalException(AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.java:335) at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallerImpl.createUnmarshalException(UnmarshallerImpl.java:514) at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal0(UnmarshallerImpl.java:215) at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal(UnmarshallerImpl.java:184) at javax.xml.bind.helpers.AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal(AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.java:157) at javax.xml.bind.helpers.AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal(AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.java:214) at com.cisco.hn.cs.common.http.client.RestClientErrorHandler.handleError(RestClientErrorHandler.java:41) at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.handleResponseError(RestTemplate.java:486) at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.doExecute(RestTemplate.java:443) at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.execute(RestTemplate.java:401) at org.springframework.web.client.Res[WARN ] 2016-06-15 17:55:03,835 ajp-bio-8009-exec-147: failed to unmarshall the body of the response: {"error":"invalid_grant","error_description":"authentication failure"} javax.xml.bind.UnmarshalException - with linked exception: [org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; lineNumber: 1; columnNumber: 1; Content is not allowed in prolog.] at javax.xml.bind.helpers.AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.createUnmarshalException(AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.java:335) at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallerImpl.createUnmarshalException(UnmarshallerImpl.java:514) at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal0(UnmarshallerImpl.java:215) at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal(UnmarshallerImpl.java:184) at javax.xml.bind.helpers.AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal(AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.java:157) at javax.xml.bind.helpers.AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal(AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.java:214) at com.cisco.hn.cs.common.http.client.RestClientErrorHandler.handleError(RestClientErrorHandler.java:41) at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.handleResponseError(RestTemplate.java:486) at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.doExecute(RestTemplate.java:443) at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.execute(RestTemplate.java:401) at org.springframework.web.client.Res'; my $regex = qr/\"error_description\"\:\"(?P<error_description>.\w+\s+\w+)/p; if ( $str =~ /$regex/g ) { print "Whole match is ${^MATCH} and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[0] and \$+[0]\n"; # print "Capture Group 1 is $1 and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[1] and \$+[1]\n"; # print "Capture Group 2 is $2 ... and so on\n"; } # ${^POSTMATCH} and ${^PREMATCH} are also available with the use of '/p' # Named capture groups can be called via $+{name}

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 Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html