Regular Expressions 101

Save & Share

  • Regex Version: ver. 1
  • Update Regex
    ctrl+⇧+s
  • Save new Regex
    ctrl+s
  • Add to Community Library

Flavor

  • PCRE2 (PHP >=7.3)
  • PCRE (PHP <7.3)
  • ECMAScript (JavaScript)
  • Python
  • Golang
  • Java 8
  • .NET 7.0 (C#)
  • Rust
  • Regex Flavor Guide

Function

  • Match
  • Substitution
  • List
  • Unit Tests

Tools

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
No Match

/
/
si

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/\".*?(hotelscombined\.com).*?\"/si'; $str = '<p>We had original plans to stop in <strong>Savannah</strong> for a night, but it was so close to Charleston that we decided to just top there for a few hours for lunch and a look and then drive the other few hours to Jacksonville.</p> <p>We started fairly late in the morning as we took the kids to a playground to expend their energy first thing in the morning. After half an hour of so of playing pirates we all jumped into the car to Savannah.</p> <p>In Savannah <strong>we ate at the coolest Pirate House restaurant</strong> that was built in the 1700�s. We posted a postcard and then bounced back into our mini van for the drive to <strong>Jacksonville</strong>.</p> <p>Drive was pretty uneventful with one amazing bridge and crossing over the border into Florida was exciting too.</p> <p>We realized we�d <a title="Where to stay when you are road tripping East Coast USA" href="/">booked a hotel at the actual airport</a>, but it was super cheap and had nearby food so we ate, then put the kids to bed. <em><a href="http://www.hotelscombined.com/Hotel/Jacksonville_Airport_Hotel.htm" target="_blank">For the latest prices at the Hilton click here. </a></em></p> <p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="/files/" alt="DSC07623.jpg" width="700" height="465" /></p> <p> </p>'; preg_match($re, $str, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE, 0); // Print the entire match result var_dump($matches);

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 PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php