Regular Expressions 101

1st Alternative(?<lt><)(?:(?!\/?[[:alnum:]]*>))

Group lt(?<lt><)

<the literal < (60₁₀ / 74₈ / 3C₁₆)

Non-Capturing Group(?:(?!\/?[[:alnum:]]*>))

Negative Lookahead(?!\/?[[:alnum:]]*>)

\/?optionally matches the literal / (47₁₀ / 57₈ / 2F₁₆)

Character Class[[:alnum:]]*

*matches any number of characters from the set below:

[:alnum:]an alphanumeric character [a-zA-Z0-9]

>the literal > (62₁₀ / 76₈ / 3E₁₆)

2nd Alternative(?:\s[[:alnum:]]*)(?<gt>>)

Non-Capturing Group(?:\s[[:alnum:]]*)

\sany whitespace character

Character Class[[:alnum:]]*

*matches any number of characters from the set below:

[:alnum:]an alphanumeric character [a-zA-Z0-9]

Group gt(?<gt>>)

>the literal > (62₁₀ / 76₈ / 3E₁₆)

Global pattern flags

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

U modifier: Ungreedy. Quantifiers are lazy by default. A trailing ? makes a quantifier greedy

Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.

Search reference

Regular Expression

(?<lt><)(?:(?!\/?[[:alnum:]]*>))|(?:\s[[:alnum:]]*)(?<gt>>)

New

<tag>text</tag>
<tag2>3 is > than 2</tag2>
<tag3>But 1 in < than 4</tag3>
<tag3>But sometimes we<want or>this</tag3>
<tag3>Or even things like this< < <symbols</tag3>

Regular Expression

Extraction