Regular Expressions 101

Explanation

Pro

Non-Capturing Group(?:\G(?<!^)|(jack|james))

1st Alternative\G(?<!^)

\Gstart of current search

Negative Lookbehind(?<!^)

^start of line

2nd Alternative(jack|james)

Group 1(jack|james)

1st Alternativejack

jackthe literal text jack (case sensitive)

2nd Alternativejames

jamesthe literal text james (case sensitive)

Non-Capturing Group(?:\W+\w{1,3})*

*repeats the group contents below any number of times:

\W+any non-word character, repeated at least once

\w{1,3}any word character, repeated between 1 and 3 times

\W+any non-word character, repeated at least once

Group 2(\w{4,})

\w{4,}any word character, repeated at least 4 times

Positive Lookahead(?=(?:(?!\1).)*?(?!\1)(jack|james))

Non-Capturing Group(?:(?!\1).)*?

*?repeats the group contents below any number of times:

Negative Lookahead(?!\1)

\1the text saved by group 1

.any character (except for line terminators)

Negative Lookahead(?!\1)

\1the text saved by group 1

Group 3(jack|james)

1st Alternativejack

jackthe literal text jack (case sensitive)

2nd Alternativejames

jamesthe literal text james (case sensitive)

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

Match Information

Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.

Quick Reference

25 tokens

Regular Expression

(?:\G(?<!^)|(jack|james))(?:\W+\w{1,3})*\W+(\w{4,})(?=(?:(?!\1).)*?(?!\1)(jack|james))

New

james was playing with jack yesterday
jack was playing with james yersterday
jack and james are best friends
james will be helping jack with his homework
yesterday, james come over jack's house