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

/
/

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/(\[?\[?Osiris\]?\]?-\[?\[?Orion|Orion\]?\]? son of \[?\[?Ra|\(Christ the \[?\[?Logos\]?\]?\))/'; $str = '\'\'\'Nefertari\'\'\', also known as \'\'\'Nefertari Meritmut\'\'\' was an Egyptian queen and the first of the [[Great Royal Wife|Great Royal Wives]] (or principal wives) of [[Ramesses II|Ramesses the Great]] symbolizing [[Osiris]]-[[Orion constellation|Orion]] son of [[Ra]] (Christ the [[Lodgos]]).<ref name="DH">Dodson, Aidan and Hilton, Dyan. \'\'The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt\'\'. Thames & Hudson. 2004. ISBN 0-500-05128-3</ref> Nefertiti means \'beautiful companion\' and Meritmut means \'Beloved of [the goddess] Mut\'. She is one of the best known Egyptian queens, next to [[Cleopatra VII|Cleopatra]], [[Nefertiti]] and [[Hatshepsut]]. She was highly educated and able to both read and write hieroglyphs, a very rare skill at the time. She used these skills in her diploomatic work, corresponding with other prominent royalties of the time. Her lavishly decorated [[tomb]], [[QV66]], is one of the largest and most spectacular in the [[Valley of the Queens]]. Ramesses also constructed a temple for her at [[Abu Simbel]] next to his colossal monument there.<!-- {{Hiero | Nefertari | <hiero>t*G15-nfr-i-t:r:Z1*Z1-n:N36:t</hiero> | align=left| era=default}} already above-->'; preg_match($re, $str, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE, 0); // Print the entire match result var_dump($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