Regular Expressions 101

Pro

^start of line

movies/the literal text movies/ (case sensitive)

Group 1([a-z])

Character Class[a-z]

a-zone character from a (97₁₀) to z (122₁₀) (case sensitive)

Non-Capturing Group(?:/page/(\d+)|)

1st Alternative/page/(\d+)

/page/the literal text /page/ (case sensitive)

Group 2(\d+)

\d+a digit, repeated at least once

2nd Alternative — matches an empty string

/?optionally matches the literal / (47₁₀ / 57₈ / 2F₁₆)

$end of line

Global pattern flags

g modifier: global. Finds all matches instead of stopping after the first

m modifier: multiline. Causes ^ and $ to match the start and end of each line, not only the start and end of the string

Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.

25 tokens

Regular Expression

^movies/([a-z])(?:/page/(\d+)|)/?$

New

movies/a
movies/a/
movies/b
movies/c
movies/aquaman
movies/ant-man
movies/a/page/2
movies/a/page/2/
movies/a/page

(the 2nd and last ones include a trailing slash, i.e. /)

Extraction

movies/a
movies/a/
movies/b
movies/c
movies/aquaman
movies/ant-man
movies/a/page/2
movies/a/page/2/
movies/a/page

(the 2nd and last ones include a trailing slash, i.e. /)