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
Processing...

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

import re regex = re.compile((r"^( *)( *)( *)(['.-])((?!\4)(?4)+?)((?!\4|\5)(?4)++)\1\3whale\n" r"(?=.(.))\6.\7\4(?!\4|\6)([_\/])\3(?!(?11))\8\2(?=\2)\3\1_((?=\4+.).\5(?!\6)\5)(?!.?')\7\4\n" r"(?=.\7)\6.([,`])\3{2}(?=.((?!\8)[_\/])\11)\Q(_\E.\4{2}(?!\.)\5((?!\10)(?10)(?!\4+|\5|\6))\1\3{3}(\\)\n" r"(\3{3})\13\2{2}\1{1}\3+(?<=\S {10})\4\1\3\|\n" r"\1(?=\12)(?12)(?!`,)\10\4(\11{2})\4\14\10\15\9\8\n" r"\14{2}(?=\6)['-]\4(?<!-)\11\8\11\4\6\11\15\.-|(?!)")) test_str = (" .-' whale\n" "'--./ / _.---.\n" "'-, (__..-` \\\n" " \\ . |\n" " `,.__. ,__.--/\n" " '._/_.'___.-") match = regex.search(test_str) if match: print(f"Match 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