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

/
/
mgs

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

re = /(\b\w.{3,49})\1{4}/m str = 'I like fish very much I like fish very much I like fish very much Marshmallows are yummy. Marshmallows are yummy. Marshmallows are yummy. But this would not be: I like fish very much I like fish very much I like fish very much I like fish very much I like fish very much I like fish very much I like fish very much I like fish very much nor this: Marshmallows are yummy. Marshmallows are yummy. Marshmallows are yummy. Marshmallows are yummy. Marshmallows are yummy. Marshmallows are yummy. Marshmallows are yummy. Marshmallows are yummy. Marshmallows are yummy. Marshmallows are yummy. Ideally, it would also catch it even if it was entered like this: I like fish very much I like fish very much I like fish very much I like fish very much I like fish very much I like fish very much' # Print the match result str.scan(re) do |match| puts match.to_s end

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 Ruby, please visit: http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.2.0/Regexp.html