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

/
/
gxm

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

using System; using System.Text.RegularExpressions; public class Example { public static void Main() { string pattern = @"<a\s+ # Look for '<a' followed by whitespace ([^>]+\s+)? # Look for anything else that isn't 'href=' # such as 'class=' or 'id=' href\s*=\s* # locate the 'href=' with any whitespace around the '=' character ( '([^']*)' # Look for '...' | # ...or... ""([^""]*) # Look for ""..."" | # ...or... ([^\s>]+) # Look anything NOT '>' or spaces ) [^>]*> # Match anything else up to the closing '>' "; string input = @"<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Hyperlinks</title> <link href=""theme.css"" rel=""stylesheet"" /> </head> <body> <ul><li><a href=""/"" id=""home"">Home</a></li><li><a class=""selected"" href=/courses>Courses</a> </li><li><a href = '/forum' >Forum</a></li><li><a class=""href"" onclick=""go()"" href= ""#"">Forum</a></li> <li><a id=""js"" href = ""javascript:alert('hi yo')"" class=""new"">click</a></li> <li><a id='nakov' href = http://www.nakov.com class='new'>nak</a></li></ul> <a href=""#empty""></a> <a id=""href"">href='fake'<img src='http://abv.bg/i.gif' alt='abv'/></a><a href=""#"">&lt;a href='hello'&gt;</a> <!-- This code is commented: <a href=""#commented"">commentex hyperlink</a> --> </body> "; RegexOptions options = RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace | RegexOptions.Multiline; foreach (Match m in Regex.Matches(input, pattern, options)) { Console.WriteLine("'{0}' found at index {1}.", m.Value, m.Index); } } }

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 C#, please visit: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.text.regularexpressions.regex(v=vs.110).aspx