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

/
/
gmi

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = '# Oh yeah, good luck with that. ?? Can I use the gun? Enough about your promiscuous mother, Hermes! We have bigger problems. !!- Guards! Bring me the forms I need to fill out to have her taken away! TODO Shinier than yours, meatbag. - Wow, you got that off the Internet? - In my day, the Internet was only used to download pornography. Would you censor the Venus de Venus just because you can see her spewers? ! No argument here. RWC: Oh no! The professor will hit me! [] But if Zoidberg \'fixes\' it… then perhaps gifts! I was all of history\'s great robot actors - Acting Unit 0. 8; Thespomat; David Duchovny! [] Five hours? Aw, man! Couldn\'t you just get me the death penalty? When I was first asked to make a film about my nephew, Hubert Farnsworth, I thought "Why should I?" Then later, Leela made the film. But if I did make it, you can bet there would have been more topless women on motorcycles. Roll film! Um, is this the boring, peaceful kind of taking to the streets? '; my $regex = qr/(\B(\?\?|\?)|\B(\!\!|\!)|\B(\[\])|\b(RWC)|\b(TODO))[:;.,-]?\d*($|\s.*$|\(.*$)/mip; 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