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

/
/
gm

Test String

Substitution

Processing...

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"bugid.*\n(.*)" test_str = ("bugid = 461 \n" "comment#461 = drop-cap position for hanging, jutting, etc \n" "bugid = 466 \n" "comment#466 = Positioning printouts on the page \n" "bugid = 480 \n" "comment#480 = Being able to *switch* items in the Distribute/Align menu \n" "bugid = 492 \n" "comment#492 = Footnotes which stay on the same page as the associated word \n" "bugid = 498 \n" "comment#498 = Typography Preference Settings as part of Paragraph Styles \n" "bugid = 502 \n" "comment#502 = Multiselection in items Overview \n" "bugid = 504 \n" "comment#504 = We need more accuray object selection \n" "bugid = 505 \n" "comment#505 = Object sellection with Ctrl \n" "bugid = 533 \n" "comment#533 = move objects in the object-tree \n" "bugid = 555 \n" "comment#555 = rotating objects without rotate-cursor ? \n" "bugid = 575 \n" "comment#575 = (in general multiple application of properties) \n" "bugid = 577 \n" "comment#577 = Paragraph Styles -> Kerning and language options missing \n" "bugid = 579 \n" "comment#579 = right-click paragraph, save as paragraph style \n" "bugid = 689 \n" "comment#689 = basepoint of lines cannot be set to the middle or diagonal one \n" "bugid = 835 \n" "comment#835 = Measurement attachment to the guides and frames \n" "bugid = 889 \n" "comment#889 = inverse bezier tool handling \n" "bugid = 950 \n" "comment#950 = The search and replace dialogue should not be modal because the way it is now you cannot cut and paste into it. \n" "bugid = 990 \n" "comment#990 = Mail-Merge \n" "bugid = 1008 \n" "comment#1008 = ? \n" "bugid = 1032 \n" "comment#1032 = Request: PDF Bookmarks at arbritrary locations within text frames. \n" "bugid = 1034 \n" "comment#1034 = Edit Paste disabled after copy from another program, but Control V works \n" "bugid = 1037 \n" "comment#1037 = GetTextLength returns 0 for non-empty frame \n" "bugid = 1069 \n" "comment#1069 = Auto-adjust size of text box to the text \n" "bugid = 1085 \n" "comment#1085 = Better text on path control \n" "bugid = 1086 \n" "comment#1086 = Lines styles with two or more parallel lines \n" "bugid = 1094 \n" "comment#1094 = Importing multipage PDFs must give options for importing a selection of pages see also 1352 (dup) \n" "bugid = 1118 \n" "comment#1118 = Give instant access to Style editor from within the Properties palette>Text \n" "bugid = 1212 \n" "comment#1212 = styles for drop caps \n" "bugid = 1321 \n" "comment#1321 = Individual DPI settings \n" "bugid = 1398 \n" "comment#1398 = Improve memory efficiency of raster image export \n" "bugid = 1406 \n" "comment#1406 = Add text metrics to scripter \n" "bugid = 1410 \n" "comment#1410 = Allow automatic text frames after document has been started \n" "bugid = 1423 \n" "comment#1423 = Single key-stroke to kern letters... \n" "bugid = 1462 \n" "comment#1462 = Lines (borders) on frames are drawn from the center of the edge to the outside \n" "bugid = 1463 \n" "comment#1463 = Add pdf export \"templates\" \n" "bugid = 1474 \n" "comment#1474 = RTF Import \n" "bugid = 1475 \n" "comment#1475 = Bad hyphenating implementation \n" "bugid = 1518 \n" "comment#1518 = PrefsTable breaks if indexing is started from (1,0) \n" "bugid = 1540 \n" "comment#1540 = Issue with stylesheet and emphasis like italic or bold fonts \n" "bugid = 1569 \n" "comment#1569 = regression from 1.2 \n" "bugid = 1592 \n" "comment#1592 = New textframes not linkable to \"Autoframes\" \n" "bugid = 1598 \n" "comment#1598 = - assigned Missing preference to text importer \n" "bugid = 1622 \n" "comment#1622 = Splitting the import menu \n" "bugid = 1627 \n" "comment#1627 = improvement for handling changes in images on disc \n" "bugid = 1629 \n" "comment#1629 = A need to run menu items from the scriptor for automation purposes \n" "bugid = 1630 \n" "comment#1630 = A macro recorder to build a script automatically from users actions. \n" "bugid = 1663 \n" "comment#1663 = ability to assign shortcut keys to the running of a script \n" "bugid = 1671 \n" "comment#1671 = - needs testing \n" "bugid = 1678 \n" "comment#1678 = Search in Picture Management should search user specified directory list, pick up all matching images in dir. \n" "bugid = 2264 \n" "comment#2264 = - Support more PDF/X-x versions \n" "bugid = 2460 \n" "comment#2460 = - Support JDF") subst = "\\1\\n" # You can manually specify the number of replacements by changing the 4th argument result = re.sub(regex, subst, test_str, 0, re.MULTILINE) if result: print (result) # 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