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

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/^[^.#,]*[.#,].*?\bMY_STRING\b[^,\r\n]*;(?:video|comment)(*SKIP)(*FAIL)|\bMY_STRING\b/m'; $str = '[1] text,MY_STRING ;comment text,MY_STRING text ;comment text,text MY_STRING text ;comment -------------------------------------------------------------- -> dont catch any above because exist a **comma** before #MY_STRING# and ;comment after. -------------------------------------------------------------- [2] text, MY_STRING , text ;comment -------------------------------------------------------------- -> catch because exist a **comma** after #MY_STRING# -------------------------------------------------------------- [3] text, MY_STRING, MY_STRING ;comment -------------------------------------------------------------- -> catch first #MY_STRING# but don\'t catch last #MY_STRING# because she is between , and ;comment -------------------------------------------------------------- [4] MY_STRING MY_STRING,text text, MY_STRING, MY_STRING ;comment text MY_STRING ;comment text,MY_STRING,text ;comment %MY_STRING% , (MY_STRING) -------------------------------------------------------------- -> catch all, because there\'s no [comma . #] preceding #MY_STRING# and no [# ;comment ;video] succeeding -------------------------------------------------------------- [5] .MY_STRING #MY_STRING MY_STRING# -------------------------------------------------------------- - > dont catch any Independent of where MY_STRING is, either what it has between, don\'t catch any, because they have . or # preceding/proceeding the string. -------------------------------------------------------------- [6] MY_STRING, .MY_STRING, #MY_STRING, text, MY_STRING text, MY_STRING#, MY_STRING, .MY_STRING -------------------------------------------------------------- -> same as above, just catch MY_STRING samples not containing . # -------------------------------------------------------------- [7] text, MY_STRING ;video MY_STRING ;video #MY_STRING, MY_STRING, text, text MY_STRING ;video -------------------------------------------------------------- - > In this case, the string will not be caught independent of where it is or what it has preceding/succeeding because exist the string ;video at the ending. -------------------------------------------------------------- [8] text,MY_STRING, text ;comment ^ ok catch (reason explained above) -------------------------------------------------------------- [9] text,MY_STRING@ text ;comment -------------------------------------------------------------- ^ dont catch, because there\'s no comma after the string, and there\'s a comma before and ;comment after -------------------------------------------------------------- [10] MY_STRING,text,#MY_STRING,text,text,%MY_STRING% @ $text #text <text> ;comment ^[1] ^[2] ^[3] -------------------------------------------------------------- [1] catch [2] don\'t (# preceding) [3] don\'t catch, because there\'s a comma preceding, no comma succeding and at the end line exist the string ;comment -------------------------------------------------------------- [11] .MY_STRING,text,MY_STRING,text,text,%MY_STRING% @ $text, #text <text> ;comment ^[1] ^[2] ^[3] ^[4] -------------------------------------------------------------- [1] don\'t (dot preceding) [2] catch [3] catch because there\'s a comma on [4] so the string is not anymore between a comma preceding and ;comment succeeding, she is now between a comma preceding a comma succeeding and ;comment'; preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0); // Print the entire match result var_dump($matches);

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 PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php