Regular Expressions 101

Save & Manage Regex

  • Current Version: 1
  • Save & Share
  • Community Library

Flavor

  • PCRE2 (PHP)
  • ECMAScript (JavaScript)
  • Python
  • Golang
  • Java
  • .NET 7.0 (C#)
  • Rust
  • PCRE (Legacy)
  • Regex Flavor Guide

Function

  • Match
  • Substitution
  • List
  • Unit Tests
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
Processing...

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

import re regex = re.compile(r"<inventor sequence=\"[^\"]*\" designation=\"[^\"]*\">(.*?)<\/inventor>", flags=re.MULTILINE) test_str = "<inventor sequence=\"001\" designation=\"us-only\"><addressbook><last-name>Li</last-name><first-name>Shuo</first-name><address><city>Beijing</city><country>CN</country></address></addressbook></inventor><inventor sequence=\"002\" designation=\"us-only\"><addressbook><last-name>Liu</last-name><first-name>Xin Peng</first-name><address><city>Beijing</city><country>CN</country></address></addressbook></inventor><inventor sequence=\"003\" designation=\"us-only\"><addressbook><last-name>Sun</last-name><first-name>Sheng Yan</first-name><address><city>Beijing</city><country>CN</country></address></addressbook></inventor><inventor sequence=\"004\" designation=\"us-only\"><addressbook><last-name>Wang</last-name><first-name>Hua</first-name><address><city>Littleton</city><state>MA</state><country>US</country></address></addressbook></inventor><inventor sequence=\"005\" designation=\"us-only\"><addressbook><last-name>Wang</last-name><first-name>Jun</first-name><address><city>Littleton</city><state>MA</state><country>US</country></address></addressbook></inventor>" matches = regex.finditer(test_str) for match_num, match in enumerate(matches, start=1): print(f"Match {match_num} was found at {match.start()}-{match.end()}: {match.group()}") for group_num, group in enumerate(match.groups(), start=1): print(f"Group {group_num} found at {match.start(group_num)}-{match.end(group_num)}: {group}")

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 Python, please visit: https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html