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

Substitution

Processing...

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

re = /^((?>(?:(?:[^;"\n]*"(?>(?:[^"\n]+|"")*)")+)?)[^";\n]*"?[^";\n]*);.*/m str = 'Peekaboo ; A comment starts with a semicolon and continues till the EOL Unless the semicolon is surrounded by dquotes "Don’t do it ; here" ;but match me; once Im not surrounded "so pay attention to me" ; "peekaboo" Im not surrounded "so pay attention" to;me" ; "peekaboo" Im not surrounded "so pay attention to me ; peekaboo Dquote escapes a dquote so "dont pay attention to ""me;here"" buster" do it ; here Don’t pay attention to """me;here""" but do ""it;here"" and "dont do ""it;here""" either ;peekaboo but "pay attention to "it;here"" ;not here though Simon said "I like goats" then he added "and sheep;" ;a good comment is "here Simon said "I like goats" then he added "and sheep;" dont do it here Simon said ""I like goats;"peekaboo Simon said "I like goats;""peekaboo ""I like goats;"peekaboo "I like goats;""peekaboo "aaa ; bb"' subst = '$1' result = str.gsub(re, subst) # Print the result of the substitution puts 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 Ruby, please visit: http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.0/Regexp.html