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
Processing...

Test String

Substitution
Processing...

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

import re regex = re.compile(r"(?:[aeAE][lI][ -])?(?:[GKQ]h?|Qu)[aeu]([tdz]{1,2}[h']?)\1?af{1,2}[iy]") test_str = ("AI Kadafi\n" "Al Gaddafi\n" "Al Ghaddafi\n" "Al Qaddafi\n" "Al Qathafi\n" "Al-Gathafi\n" "Al-Kaddafi\n" "El Gaddafi\n" "El Kadhafi\n" "El Kazzafi\n" "El Qaddafi\n" "El Qathafi\n" "Gadaffi\n" "Gadafi\n" "Gadafy\n" "Gaddafi\n" "Gaddhafi\n" "Gadhafi\n" "Gathafi\n" "Ghadaffi\n" "Ghadafi\n" "Ghaddafi\n" "Ghaddafy\n" "Gheddafi\n" "Kad'afi\n" "Kadaffi\n" "Kaddafi\n" "Kadhafi\n" "Kazzafi\n" "Khadaffy\n" "Khadafy\n" "Khaddafi\n" "Qadafi\n" "Qaddafi\n" "Qadhafi\n" "Qadhdhafi\n" "Qadthafi\n" "Qathafi\n" "Quathafi\n" "Qudhafi\n" "al Gaddafi\n" "al Ghaddafi\n" "al-Gaddafi\n" "al-Kad'afi\n" "al-Kadafi\n" "al-Khaddafi\n" "al-Qadafi\n" "al-Qaddafi\n" "al-Qadhafi\n" "al-Qadhdhafi\n" "el Gaddafi\n" "el Gaddafy\n" "el Gadhafi\n" "el Qaddafi\n" "el-Gadhafi") subst = "\\1\\2\\3\\3\\2\\1" result = regex.sub(subst, test_str) if result: print(result)

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