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
Processing...

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

import re regex = re.compile(r"BEGIN:VNOTE[\S\s]+?PRINTABLE:([\S\s]+?)D(CREATED:[\S\s]+?)T[\S\s]+?LAST-MODIFIED[\S\s]+?END:VNOTE", flags=re.MULTILINE) test_str = ("BEGIN:VNOTE\n" "VERSION:1.1\n" "BODY;CHARSET=UTF-8;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:Extracting text from a file is a common task in scripting and programming\n" "DCREATED:20180304T203529\n" "LAST-MODIFIED:20180304T203529\n" "END:VNOTEBEGIN:VNOTE\n" "VERSION:1.1\n" "BODY;CHARSET=UTF-8;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:Most systems come pre-installed with Python\n" "DCREATED:20190406T112342\n" "LAST-MODIFIED:20190406T112342\n" "END:VNOTEBEGIN:VNOTE\n" "VERSION:1.1\n" "BODY;CHARSET=UTF-8;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:On Linux and macOS, the command to run the Python 3 interpreter is python3.\n" "DCREATED:20170603T171656\n" "LAST-MODIFIED:20170607T174906\n" "END:VNOTEBEGIN:VNOTE\n" "VERSION:1.1\n" "BODY;CHARSET=UTF-8;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:Running Python with a file name will interpret that python program.\n" "DCREATED:20190415T102154\n" "LAST-MODIFIED:20190808T121123\n" "END:VNOTEBEGIN:VNOTE\n" "VERSION:1.1\n" "BODY;CHARSET=UTF-8;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.\n\n" "Mauris nec maximus purus. Maecenas sit amet pretium tellus.\n\n" "Quisque at dignissim lacus.\n" "DCREATED:20190511T110151\n" "LAST-MODIFIED:20190511T110151\n" "END:VNOTEBEGIN:VNOTE\n" "VERSION:1.1\n" "BODY;CHARSET=UTF-8;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:A Python program can read a text file using the built-in open() function.\n" "DCREATED:20190501T074415\n" "LAST-MODIFIED:20190511T130424\n" "END:VNOTE") matches = regex.finditer(test_str) for match_num, match in enumerate(matches, start=1): print(f"Match {match_num} was found at {match.start()}-{match.end()}: {match.group()}") for group_num, group in enumerate(match.groups(), start=1): print(f"Group {group_num} found at {match.start(group_num)}-{match.end(group_num)}: {group}")

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 Python, please visit: https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html