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

use strict; my $str = '/a> ref|NP_010829.1| Irc4p [Saccharomyces cerevisiae S288c] &gt;gi|74676333|sp|Q03036.1|IRC4_YEAST RecName: Full=Uncharacterized protein IRC4; AltName: Full=Increased recombination centers protein 4 &gt;gi|1165295|gb|AAB64982.1| Ydr540cp [Saccharomyces cerevisiae] &gt;gi|51012753|gb|AAT92670.1| YDR540C [Saccharomyces cerevisiae] &gt;gi|151942499|gb|EDN60855.1| conserved protein [Saccharomyces cerevisiae YJM789] &gt;gi|190404545|gb|EDV07812.1| conserved hypothetical protein [Saccharomyces cerevisiae RM11-1a] &gt;gi|259145774|emb|CAY79038.1| Irc4p [Saccharomyces cerevisiae EC1118] &gt;gi|285811545|tpg|DAA12369.1| TPA: Irc4p [Saccharomyces cerevisiae S288c] &gt;gi|323309617|gb|EGA62826.1| Irc4p [Saccharomyces cerevisiae FostersO] &gt;gi|323338091|gb|EGA79326.1| Irc4p [Saccharomyces cerevisiae Vin13] &gt;gi|365766295|gb|EHN07794.1| Irc4p [Saccharomyces cerevisiae x Saccharomyces kudriavzevii VIN7] &gt;gi|392300658|gb|EIW11749.1| Irc4p [Saccharomyces cerevisiae CEN.PK113-7D] &gt;gi|584366859|gb|EWG86852.1| Irc4p [Saccharomyces cerevisiae R008] &gt;gi|584372222|gb|EWG92158.1| Irc4p [Saccharomyces cerevisiae P301] &gt;gi|584376691|gb|EWG96547.1| Irc4p [Saccharomyces cerevisiae R103] &gt;gi|584477456|gb|EWH19199.1| Irc4p [Saccharomyces cerevisiae P283]'; my $regex = qr/^(.+?)&gt;.*$/mp; if ( $str =~ /$regex/g ) { print "Whole match is ${^MATCH} and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[0] and \$+[0]\n"; # print "Capture Group 1 is $1 and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[1] and \$+[1]\n"; # print "Capture Group 2 is $2 ... and so on\n"; } # ${^POSTMATCH} and ${^PREMATCH} are also available with the use of '/p' # Named capture groups can be called via $+{name}

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 Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html