Regular Expressions 101

Save & Share

  • Regex Version: ver. 11
  • Update Regex
    ctrl+⇧+s
  • Save new Regex
    ctrl+s
  • Add to Community Library

Flavor

  • PCRE2 (PHP >=7.3)
  • PCRE (PHP <7.3)
  • ECMAScript (JavaScript)
  • Python
  • Golang
  • Java 8
  • .NET 7.0 (C#)
  • Rust
  • Regex Flavor Guide

Function

  • Match
  • Substitution
  • List
  • Unit Tests

Tools

Sponsors
There are currently no sponsors. Become a sponsor today!
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

r"
"
gsx

Test String

Code Generator

Generated Code

using System; using System.Text.RegularExpressions; public class Example { public static void Main() { string pattern = @"(?P<content>.*?) # Content up to next tag (?P<markup> # Entire tag <!\[CDATA\[(?P<cdata>.+?)]]>| # <![CDATA[ ... ]]> <!--(?P<comment>.+?)-->| # <!-- Comment --> </\s*(?P<close_tag>\w+)\s*>| # </tag> <(?P<tag>\w+) # <tag ... (?P<attributes> (?P<attribute>\s+ # <snip>: Use this part to get the attributes out of 'attributes' group. (?P<attribute_name>\w+) (?:\s*=\s* (?P<attribute_value> [\w:/.\-]+| # Unquoted (?=(?P<_v> # Quoted (?P<_q>['\""]).*?(?<!\\)(?P=_q))) (?P=_v) ))? # </snip> )* )\s* (?P<is_self_closing>/?) # Self-closing indicator >) # End of tag "; string input = @"In this case, $url will indeed contain http://example.com/whatever.jpg. But what happens when you start getting HTML like this: <img src='http://example.com/whatever.jpg'> or <img src=http://example.com/whatever.jpg> or <img border=0 src=""http://example.com/whatever.jpg""> or <img border src=""http://example.com/whatever.jpg""> or <img src=""http://example.com/whatever.jpg""> or you start getting false positives from <!-- // commented out <img src=""http://example.com/outdated.png""> --> <script><![CDATA[ This is <b>not</b> parsed ]]></script> <asd ASD=asd> <!-- // commented out <img src=""http://example.com/outdated.png""> --> No quotes: <iframe src=test.html target=xyz></ iframe > Self-closing tag: <a href=test.html target=xyz/> Self closing tag with a space before closure: <a href=test.html target=xyz /> Double quotes: <a href=""test.html"" target=""xyz""> Single quotes: <a href='test.html' target='xyz'> Escaping double quotes: <a href=""test.html?val=1"" title=""\""No rules exist\"" Andre Breton's quote""> Escaping single quotes (also with spaces between equals signs): <a href = ""test.html?val=1"" title = 'Charlie\'s Angels'> Tag without closure (ignored): <a href = ""test.html?val=1"" title='Charlie\'s Angels' Tag without opening (ignored): a href = ""test.html?val=1"" title=""Charlie\""s Angels""> "; RegexOptions options = RegexOptions.Singleline | RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace; foreach (Match m in Regex.Matches(input, pattern, options)) { Console.WriteLine("'{0}' found at index {1}.", m.Value, m.Index); } } }

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 C#, please visit: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.text.regularexpressions.regex(v=vs.110).aspx