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

# coding=utf8 # the above tag defines encoding for this document and is for Python 2.x compatibility import re regex = r"^(?:\t| )*(?:#|%|;|//|--|REM|C|!) (?:#{64} (.*)|#{32} (.*)|#{16} (.*)|#{8} (.*)|#{4} (.*)|#{2} (.*))$" test_str = ("Valid comments that start with \"#\":\n\n" "# ################################################################ First Level\n" "# ################################ Second Level\n" "# ################ Third level\n" "# ######## Fourth Level\n" "# #### Fifth level\n" "# ## Sixth level\n\n" "Valid comments that start with different characters:\n\n" "// ################################################################ 1st Level\n" "; ################################ 2nd Level\n" "REM ################ 3rd level\n" "C ######## 4th Level\n" "% #### 5th level\n" "-- ## 6th level\n\n" "Valid comments that start with spaces or tabs:\n" " # ################################################################ 1st level\n" " ; ################################ 2nd Level\n\n" "Invalid comments:\n\n" "################################################################ No initial character\n" "; ################################################ Hashes not a power of 2\n" "@ ################ Character not recognized\n" "C ########No space after hashes\n" "% %%%%%%%% No hashes\n" ". # #### Period before spaces\n" " ;#### No space after character") matches = re.finditer(regex, test_str, re.MULTILINE) for matchNum, match in enumerate(matches, start=1): print ("Match {matchNum} was found at {start}-{end}: {match}".format(matchNum = matchNum, start = match.start(), end = match.end(), match = match.group())) for groupNum in range(0, len(match.groups())): groupNum = groupNum + 1 print ("Group {groupNum} found at {start}-{end}: {group}".format(groupNum = groupNum, start = match.start(groupNum), end = match.end(groupNum), group = match.group(groupNum))) # Note: for Python 2.7 compatibility, use ur"" to prefix the regex and u"" to prefix the test string and substitution.

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