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

r"
"
gm

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = 'Description: Wales 0-0 Bosnia-Herzegovina<p>It was not <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/oct/09/wales-bosnia-chris-coleman-euro-2016-qualifier" title="">the victory that Chris Coleman, his players and the home supporters craved</a> to ignite hopes of qualifying for the European Championships in France but this may well turn out to be a precious point for Wales. Ashley Williams and Hal Robson-Kanu will have sleepless nights about the glorious chances they squandered late on but at the other end of the pitch it was impossible to overlook the outstanding contribution Wayne Hennessey made in goal.</p><p>Unable to get into the Crystal Palace team at the moment, Hennessey produced half a dozen crucial stops here, including a triple save early in the second half and perhaps most memorably of all flicked Miralem Pjanics 30-yard free-kick over the bar eight minutes from time, when the Bosnia playmaker looked to have found the top corner.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/oct/10/wales-bosnia-herzegovina-euro-2016-qualifying">Continue reading...</a>'; my $regex = qr/<[^>]*>/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