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

r"
"
gm

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = 'Lorem ASPIRE dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. ASPIRE finibus mauris quis tortor commodo, ut placerat sapien pellentesque. Interdum et malesuada ASPIRE ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. Proin efficitur purus eu varius AB. Sed congue dui sit amet aliquet tempor. Praesent sit amet ABC velit, nec rhoncus elit. Curabitur eget magna elementum, porttitor metus tincidunt, semper turpis. Curabitur a ante tristique, hendrerit leo malesuada, mattis arcu. Fusce nec ultricies dolor, nec aliquet ASPIRE. Morbi tempor vel dolor sed varius. Vestibulum non ipsum ultrices, egestas nulla lobortis, fringilla nisi. Phasellus commodo tristique dolor eu dictum. Phasellus orci risus, dignissim eget tortor at, tincidunt ASPIRE est. Nunc eget tellus ut diam vestibulum laoreet sed ASPIRE odio.'; my $regex = qr/(?:\w+\W+){4}([A-Z]{3,})(?:\W+\w+){4}/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