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

/
/
gm

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = ':-) :) :D :o) :] :3 :c) :> =] 8) =) :} :^) :っ) :-D 8-D 8D x-D xD X-D XD =-D =D =-3 =3 B^D :-)) >:[ :-( :( :-c :c :-< :っC :< :-[ :[ :{ ;( :-|| :@ >:( :\'-( :\'( :\'-) :\') D:< D: D8 D; D= DX v.v D-\': >:O :-O :O :-o :o 8-0 O_O o-o O_o o_O o_o O-O :* :^* ( \'}{\' ) ;-) ;) *-) *) ;-] ;] ;D ;^) :-, >:P :-P :P X-P x-p xp XP :-p :p =p :-Þ :Þ :þ :-þ :-b :b d: >:\\ >:/ :-/ :-. :/ :\\ =/ =\\ :L =L :S >.< :| :-| :$ :-X :X :-# :# O:-) 0:-3 0:3 0:-) 0:) 0;^) >:) >;) >:-) }:-) }:) 3:-) 3:) o/\\o ^5 >_>^ ^<_< |;-) |-O :-& :& #-) %-) %) <:-| ಠ_ಠ \\o/ *\\0/* (>_<) ~_~ -.-\' (=_=) '; my $regex = qr/(?!\d\d)(?![a-zA-Z]{2})(?:(?:>?[:;=%8BXx]['‘’]?[-o*,^っ]?(?:(?P<mouth>[()|Il])(?P=mouth)*|[\/0\]o\\D\[PpSs<>{}CcOXx*3@ÞþbL&?$#]))|(?:[()\\{}\/<\[>\]DOo0|SsXxlI*@q][-o*,]?['‘’]?[:=8;%Xx]<?))|(?P<head>\()?(?:(?P<eye>[<>v*.^~=ಠ-])?[_.-](?P=eye)|[o0O][_.-][o0O]|>[_.-]?<)['‘’]?(?(head)\))|xD|XD|XP|xP|DX|<3|\^\^|\\o\/|o\/|\\o/mp; 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