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
Processing...

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/\b(\d{2})\/(\d{2})\/(\d{4})\s+(\d{2}):(\d{2}):(\d{2}).(\d{3})(\|\[*)\b/'; $str = '--- Output Example 1 SESSION|01/09/2017 15:35:42.143|[SFTP:1060257_0:it:10.87.16.71] WROTE: *150 Opening BINARY mode data connection. Ready to write file /it/cpp. "/it/cpp") S T O R* SESSION|01/09/2017 15:35:42.890|[SFTP:1060257_0:it:10.87.16.71] READ: *STOR END /it/cpp:PENs3* SESSION|01/09/2017 15:35:43.133|226-Upload File Size:1571846 bytes @ 1535K/sec. MD5=8438660f668ceb3de586cd7ef1263bc4 --- Output Example 2 SESSION|01/09/2017 15:35:42.143|[SFTP:1060257_0:it:10.87.16.71] WROTE: *150 Opening BINARY mode data connection. Ready to write file /it/cpp. "/it/cpp") S T O R* SESSION|01/09/2017 15:35:43.133|226-Upload File Size:1571846 bytes @ 1535K/sec. MD5=8438660f668ceb3de586cd7ef1263bc4 SESSION|01/09/2017 15:35:42.890|[SFTP:1060257_0:it:10.87.16.71] READ: *STOR END /it/cpp:PENs3* --- Output Example 3 - Overwrighting Existing files SESSION|12/20/2016 15:12:26.273|[SFTP:1008699_0:it:10.87.16.71] WROTE: *150 Opening BINARY mode data connection. Ready to write file /it/cpp. "/it/cpp") S T O R* SESSION|12/20/2016 15:12:26.299|226-Upload File Size:25 bytes @ 0K/sec. MD5=7e5e5560ab14904d5f5b2af5fcd8bec3 SESSION|12/20/2016 15:12:26.299|[SFTP:1008699_0:it:10.87.16.71] WROTE: *226 Transfer complete. MD5=7e5e5560ab14904d5f5b2af5fcd8bec3 ("/it/cpp" 25) STOR*'; preg_match_all($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