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

/
/
gmx

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

# coding=utf8 # the above tag defines encoding for this document and is for Python 2.x compatibility import re regex = r""" ^\s* # date (?<date>\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}\s+\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}) # facility.severity \s(?<facility>\S+)\.(?<severity>\S+) # server \s(?<server>\S*) # date \s(?<otherDate>\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}:\s\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}) # time zone \s(?<timeZone>\S*) # ip address \s(?<ip>\S*) # legacy email address \s(?<legacyEmailAddress>\S*) # first name \s(?|"(?<firstName>[^"\n]+)"|(?<firstName>\S*)) # last name \s(?|"(?<lastName>[^"\n]+)"|(?<lastName>\S*)) # account number \s(?<account>\S*) # program code \s(?<programCode>\S*) # uid \s(?<uid>\S*) # email address \s(?<emailAddress>\S*) # event type \s(?<eventType>\S*) # source \s(?<source>\S*) # category \s(?<category>\S*) \s*$ """ test_str = ("2016-01-29 18:19:54 local1.info server.domain.com 2016-01-29: 11:19:54 MST UNKNOWN UNKNOWN FOO \"BAR BAZ\" UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN EMAIL@EXAMPLE.COM PROFILE_CHANGE ProfileChangeProcessor A\n" "2016-01-29 18:20:25 local4.info server.domain.com 2016-01-29: 11:20:25 MST UNKNOWN UNKNOWN \"F B\" BAZ ABC12345 GP SOME_UID EMAIL@EXAMPLE.COM EVENT_FROM_SOME_PROCESS UNKNOWN UNKNOWN\n" "2016-01-29 18:23:10 local1.info server.domain.com 2016-01-29: 11:23:10 MST UNKNOWN UNKNOWN FOO BAR UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN EMAIL@EXAMPLE.COM SOME_CHANGE ProfileChangeProcessor AP\n" "2016-01-29 18:26:24 local1.info server.domain.com 2016-01-29: 11:26:24 MST UNKNOWN EMAIL@EXAMPLE.COM FOO \"B'Baz\" UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN SOME_CHANGE ProfileChangeProcessor O\n" "2016-01-29 18:26:55 local1.info server.domain.com 2016-01-29: 11:26:55 MST UNKNOWN EMAIL@EXAMPLE.COM \"FOO OR BAR\" BAZ SXR12646 GP UNKNOWN SOME_CHANGE ProfileChangeProcessor M") matches = re.finditer(regex, test_str, re.MULTILINE | re.VERBOSE) for matchNum, match in enumerate(matches, start=1): print ("Match {matchNum} was found at {start}-{end}: {match}".format(matchNum = matchNum, start = match.start(), end = match.end(), match = match.group())) for groupNum in range(0, len(match.groups())): groupNum = groupNum + 1 print ("Group {groupNum} found at {start}-{end}: {group}".format(groupNum = groupNum, start = match.start(groupNum), end = match.end(groupNum), group = match.group(groupNum))) # Note: for Python 2.7 compatibility, use ur"" to prefix the regex and u"" to prefix the test string and substitution.

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