Regular Expressions 101

Save & Manage Regex

  • Current Version: 2
  • Save & Share
  • Community Library

Flavor

  • PCRE2 (PHP)
  • ECMAScript (JavaScript)
  • Python
  • Golang
  • Java
  • .NET 7.0 (C#)
  • Rust
  • PCRE (Legacy)
  • Regex Flavor Guide

Function

  • Match
  • Substitution
  • List
  • Unit Tests
Sponsors
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

$re = '/\b(access.log|osm_ms01.log|osm_ms01-diagnostic.log)\b/m'; $str = '``` -rw-r----- 1 osm_user osm_user 51200310 Dec 2 15:55 osm_ms01.log00025 -rw-r----- 1 osm_user osm_user 51200201 Dec 2 19:52 osm_ms01.log00026 -rw-r----- 1 osm_user osm_user 51200010 Dec 2 23:49 osm_ms01.log00027 -rw-r----- 1 osm_user osm_user 1251657 Dec 3 02:53 osm_ms01.out00098 -rw-r----- 1 osm_user osm_user 14534 Dec 3 03:23 osm_ms01.out00099 -rw-r----- 1 osm_user osm_user 2124021 Dec 9 00:42 access.log -rw-r----- 1 osm_user osm_user 3406259 Dec 9 00:44 osm_ms01.out00100 -rw-r----- 1 osm_user osm_user 14632 Dec 9 00:55 osm_ms01.out00101 -rw-r----- 1 osm_user osm_user 4142712 Dec 9 01:00 osm_ms01-diagnostic.log -rw-r----- 1 osm_user osm_user 51200768 Dec 9 13:20 osm_ms01.log00028 drwxr----- 2 osm_user osm_user 4096 Dec 11 00:58 metrics -rw-r----- 1 osm_user osm_user 1101990 Dec 11 01:38 osm_ms01.out -rw-r----- 1 osm_user osm_user 1150229 Dec 11 01:38 osm_ms01.log ```'; preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0); // Print the entire match result var_dump($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