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"
"
mg

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

re = /((?<=&m).*?(?=(?:\*\*|\*|__|~~)*(?:&r|$)))/m str = 'plain &kobfuscated &r&lbold &r&mstrikethrough &r&nunderline &r&oitalic &r&l&mbold-strikethrough &r&lbold &mbold-strikethrough &rplain plain &kobfuscated &r&lbold &r&mstrikethrough &r&nunderline &r&oitalic &r&l&mbold-strikethrough &r&lbold &mbold-strikethrough &rplain plain &kobfuscated &r&l**bold **&r&mstrikethrough &r&nunderline &r&oitalic &r&l**&mbold-strikethrough **&r&l**bold &mbold-strikethrough **&rplain plain &kobfuscated &r&l**bold **&r&mstrikethrough &r&nunderline &r&o*italic *&r&l**&mbold-strikethrough **&r&l**bold &mbold-strikethrough **&rplain plain &kobfuscated &r&l**bold **&r&mstrikethrough &r&n__underline __&r&o*italic *&r&l**&mbold-strikethrough **&r&l**bold &mbold-strikethrough **&rplain plain &kobfuscated &r&l**bold **&r&m~~strikethrough ~~&r&n__underline __&r&o*italic *&r&l**&m~~bold-strikethrough ~~**&r&l**bold &m~~bold-strikethrough ~~**&rplain plain obfuscated **bold **~~strikethrough ~~__underline __*italic ***~~bold-strikethrough ~~****bold ~~bold-strikethrough ~~**plain' # Print the match result str.scan(re) do |match| puts match.to_s end

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 Ruby, please visit: http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.0/Regexp.html