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

/
/
gms

Test String

Substitution

Processing...

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/^(PANEL\s+\S+)(.*?)(?=PANEL|\Z)/ms'; $str = 'PANEL NORMAL Diana and Gahriel run away with all their might. The monster is raging right behind them Gharial (whisper) Don’t turn back! Diana (confused) What-- PANEL LEFT Gahriel signal diane to be quiet Gharial (put his hand to his mouth signal quiet) Shh…. PANEL FOCUS The monster is running toward them quickly , right behind them PANEL FULL Diana is afraid for her own life. Her eyes wide open as the monster breathes through her. Diana (holding her mouth with her hand) Gasp PANEL RIGHT Gahriel (whisper) Everything will be okay! PANEL CENTER They both stand quietly, not a single noise., PANEL SMALL A sudden noise Crack PANEL RIGHT The monster caught Diana and bit her head off. Gahriel in shock-terror, he can’t move. '; $subst = "<div class=\"$1\">$2</div>"; $result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str); echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;

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