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

@"
"
gm

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = '(PROT(MONITOR)TYPE(LCD)MODEL(MSTAR)CMDS(01 02 03 07 0C E3 F3)VCP(02 04 05 08 0B 0C 10 12 14(01(?(((i)))) 04 05 06 07 08 0A 0B) 16 18 1A 52 54(00 01) 60(00 11 12 0F 10 21 22 2F 30 31) 62 6C 6E 70 72(05 78 FB 50 64 78 8C A0) 86(01 02 08) 8D(01 02) A4 A5 AA(01 02) AC AE B6 C0 C6 C8 C9 CA(01 02) CC(02 03 04 05 07 08 09 0A 0C 0D 01 06 0B 0E 12 14 16 17 1A 1E 24) D6(01 04 05) DC(0E 00 01 02 03 05 08 0B 1F E1) DF E0(00 01 02 03 04) E9(00 02) EB(00 01 02 03) EC(00 01() 02 03) F0(00 01) F2(00 01 02 03 04) F6(01 ) F7(42 FF) F9(00 01 02 03 04) FF)MSWHQL(1)ASSET_EEP(40)MCCS_VER(2.2))'; my $regex = qr/\w+\([^()]*(((?'parenthesesPair'\()[^()]*)+((?'-parenthesesPair'\))[^()]*)+)*(?(parenthesesPair)(?!))\)/mp; if ( $str =~ /$regex/g ) { print "Whole match is ${^MATCH} and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[0] and \$+[0]\n"; # print "Capture Group 1 is $1 and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[1] and \$+[1]\n"; # print "Capture Group 2 is $2 ... and so on\n"; } # ${^POSTMATCH} and ${^PREMATCH} are also available with the use of '/p' # Named capture groups can be called via $+{name}

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 Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html