Regular Expressions 101

\ban ASCII word boundary

Character Class[AP]

Athe literal A (65₁₀ / 101₈ / 41₁₆) (case sensitive)

Pthe literal P (80₁₀ / 120₈ / 50₁₆) (case sensitive)

Mthe literal M (77₁₀ / 115₈ / 4D₁₆) (case sensitive)

\W+any non-word character, repeated at least once

Non-Capturing Group(?:-\W+)?

?repeats the group contents below at most once:

-the literal - (45₁₀ / 55₈ / 2D₁₆)

\W+any non-word character, repeated at least once

Group 1([^:\n]+)

Negated Character Class[^:\n]+

+matches at least one character outside the set below:

:the literal : (58₁₀ / 72₈ / 3A₁₆)

\na line-feed (newline) character (ASCII 10)

:the literal : (58₁₀ / 72₈ / 3A₁₆)

Global pattern flags

g modifier: global. Finds all matches instead of stopping after the first

Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.

Search reference

Regular Expression

\b[AP]M\W+(?:-\W+)?([^:\n]+):

New

4/16/14, 10:24 AM - John Doe likes your photo
4/16/14, 10:24 AM John Doe replied to your comment
4/16/14, 10:24 AM John Doe: Whats going on
4/16/14, 10:24 AM John Doe: Whats going on : hmmm

Regular Expression

Substitution