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

/
/
gmxJ

Test String

Code Generator

Generated Code

# coding=utf8 # the above tag defines encoding for this document and is for Python 2.x compatibility import re regex = r""" ^[ ]{0,3} # Leading space up to 3 (?<link_all> (?<!\\)\[ # ID within brackets (?!\^) # Make sure, this is not confused with a footnote (?<link_id>.+?) (?<!\\)\] [ \t]* # Possibly with some space before colon \: [ \t]*\n?[ \t]* # Possibly with some space after the colon, possibly with a new line in between? (?: <(?<link_url>[^\>]+)> # link within <> | (?<link_url>\S+) # or link without <> ) (?: (?: [ \t]+ # Either some space or tabs | [ \t]*\n[ \t]* # or a new line surrounded by 0 or more spaces or tabs ) (?: (?: (?<link_title_container>['"]) # Title is surrounded ether by double or single quotes (?<link_title>.+?) \g{link_title_container} # make the sure enclosing mark balance ) | # or \((?<link_title>[^\)]+)\) # by parenthesis ) )? [ \t]* # Possibly ending with some trailing spaces or tab ) (?:\n+|\Z) # terminated by a new line or end of file """ test_str = ("[1]: /url/ \"Title\"\n\n" "[refid]: /path/to/something (Title)\n\n" "[^block]:\n" " Paragraph.\n\n" " * List item\n\n" " > Blockquote\n\n" " Code block\n") matches = re.finditer(regex, test_str, re.MULTILINE | re.VERBOSE) for matchNum, match in enumerate(matches, start=1): print ("Match {matchNum} was found at {start}-{end}: {match}".format(matchNum = matchNum, start = match.start(), end = match.end(), match = match.group())) for groupNum in range(0, len(match.groups())): groupNum = groupNum + 1 print ("Group {groupNum} found at {start}-{end}: {group}".format(groupNum = groupNum, start = match.start(groupNum), end = match.end(groupNum), group = match.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