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

/
/
gs

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

import java.util.regex.Matcher; import java.util.regex.Pattern; public class Example { public static void main(String[] args) { final String regex = "((?:<p|\\G(?!^))(?:(?!<\\/p|<\\s*\\/?\\s*br).)*)<\\s*\\/?\\s*br\\s*\\/?\\s*>"; final String string = "These 2 lines should not be<br/>\n" + "touched. Example only.<br/><br/>\n\n" + "<pre class=\"code\">mysql&gt;\n" + "<strong> SELECT state, COUNT(*) FROM president GROUP BY state;</strong><br/>\n" + "+-------+----------+<br/>\n" + "| state | COUNT(*) |<br/>\n" + "+-------+----------+<br/>\n" + "| OH | 7 |<br/>\n" + "| PA | 1 |<br/>\n" + "| SC | 1 |<br/>\n" + "| TX | 2 |<br/>\n" + "| VA | 8 |<br/>\n" + "| VT | 2 |\n" + "+-------+----------+\n" + "sdfsdf<br>\n" + "< /pre>\n" + "sdfsdf<br>\n" + "</pre>\n" + "kshdkjfkjshdf<br>\n" + "<p><br></p>"; final Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex, Pattern.DOTALL); final Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(string); while (matcher.find()) { System.out.println("Full match: " + matcher.group(0)); for (int i = 1; i <= matcher.groupCount(); i++) { System.out.println("Group " + i + ": " + matcher.group(i)); } } } }

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 Java, please visit: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html