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

/
/
gm

Test String

Code Generator

Generated Code

$re = '/(<Name>)(.*)(<\/Name>)[\n\r]*(<Telephone>)(.*)(<\/Telephone>)/m'; $str = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xxxIPPhoneDirectory clearlight="true"> <Title>Main Directory</Title> <Prompt>Prompt</Prompt> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Aaron Parks</Name> <Telephone>7404053585</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Andrea Vogelmeier</Name> <Telephone>7403343757</Telephone> <Telephone>7407451052</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Cyndi Corder</Name> <Telephone>7404041408</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Dakotah Scisciani</Name> <Telephone>7405029443</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Debbie Kallis</Name> <Telephone>7403349616</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Denise Keefe</Name> <Telephone>7402434260</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Diana Petro</Name> <Telephone>7409734464</Telephone> <Telephone>7403666385</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Ed Hutchison</Name> <Telephone>7403648351</Telephone> <Telephone>7405877205</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Eric Hall</Name> <Telephone>7406444816</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Frank Frye</Name> <Telephone>7403285924</Telephone> <Telephone>7403661298</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Gail Shulko</Name> <Telephone>7407043147</Telephone> <Telephone>7407871784</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Gretchen Rigsby</Name> <Telephone>74033640293</Telephone> <Telephone>7403234308</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Jesse Ours</Name> <Telephone>7404045337</Telephone> <Telephone>7409288801</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Jodie Greene</Name> <Telephone>7409734281</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Kim Thomson</Name> <Telephone>7405221142</Telephone> <Telephone>7403443054</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Kyle Hall</Name> <Telephone>7405045837</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Linda McKee</Name> <Telephone>7409730214</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Mitch Fellows</Name> <Telephone>7404039044</Telephone> <Telephone>7402464724</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Phil Frye</Name> <Telephone>7404037128</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Ric Lahmers</Name> <Telephone>7409734462</Telephone> <Telephone>7407632952</Telephone> <Telephone>7407632143</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Sharon Holman</Name> <Telephone>7403348205</Telephone> <Telephone>7403456949</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Terry Wilson</Name> <Telephone>7402587296</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <DirectoryEntry> <Name>Vanessa Beneze</Name> <Telephone>7404032856</Telephone> </DirectoryEntry> <SoftKeyItem> <URL>http://xxx/minibrowser/start.xml</URL> </SoftKeyItem> <SoftKeyItem> <URL>http://xxx/minibrowser/menu.xml</URL> </SoftKeyItem> </xxxIPPhoneDirectory> '; preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0); // Print the entire match result var_dump($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