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

/
/
gmx

Test String

Code Generator

Generated Code

# coding=utf8 # the above tag defines encoding for this document and is for Python 2.x compatibility import re regex = r""" (?<!\\) # negative look-behind to make sure start is not escaped (?: # start non-capture group for all possible match starts # group 1, match dollar signs only # single or double dollar sign enforced by look-arounds ((?<!\$)\${1,2}(?!\$))| # group 2, match escaped parenthesis (\\\()| # group 3, match escaped bracket (\\\[)| # group 4, match begin equation (\\begin\{equation\}) ) # if group 1 was start (?(1) # non greedy match everything in between # group 1 matches do not support recursion (.*?)(?<!\\) # match ending double or single dollar signs (?<!\$)\1(?!\$)| # else (?: # greedily and recursively match everything in between # groups 2, 3 and 4 support recursion (.*(?R)?.*)(?<!\\) (?: # if group 2 was start, escaped parenthesis is end (?(2)\\\)| # if group 3 was start, escaped bracket is end (?(3)\\\]| # else group 4 was start, match end equation \\end\{equation\} ) )))) """ test_str = ("NOTE: For test purposes each test has been contained to one line, please enable the s flag for multi-line matches.\n\n" "$ match $ don't match nested $ match $\n\n" "$$ no match$\n" "$no match$$\n" "\\\\$no match\\\\$\n" "$no match\\\\$\n" "\\\\$no match\\\\$\n\n" "$$ match $$ don't match nested $$ match $$\n\n" "$$$ no match $$\n" "$$ no match $$$\n" "\\\\$$ no match$$\n" "$$ no match\\\\$$\n" "\\\\$$ no match\\\\$$\n\n" "\\( match \\)\n" "\\( 1 \\( nested match \\) 3 \\)\n\n" "\\\\( no match \\\\)\n" "\\( no match \\\\\\\\)\n" "\\\\\\\\( no match \\\\\\\\)\n\n" "\\[ match \\]\n" "\\[ 1 \\[ nested match \\] 3 \\]\n\n" "\\\\\\\\[ no match \\\\]\n" "\\\\[ no match \\\\\\\\]\n" "\\\\\\\\[ no match \\\\\\\\]\n\n" "\\begin{equation} match \\end{equation}\n" "\\begin{equation} 1 \\begin{equation} nested match \\end{equation} \\end{equation}\n\n" "\\\\\\\\begin{equation} no match \\\\end{equation}\n" "\\\\begin{equation} no match \\\\\\\\end{equation}\n" "\\\\\\\\begin{equation} no match \\\\end{equation}") matches = re.finditer(regex, test_str, re.MULTILINE | re.VERBOSE) for matchNum, match in enumerate(matches, start=1): print ("Match {matchNum} was found at {start}-{end}: {match}".format(matchNum = matchNum, start = match.start(), end = match.end(), match = match.group())) for groupNum in range(0, len(match.groups())): groupNum = groupNum + 1 print ("Group {groupNum} found at {start}-{end}: {group}".format(groupNum = groupNum, start = match.start(groupNum), end = match.end(groupNum), group = match.group(groupNum))) # Note: for Python 2.7 compatibility, use ur"" to prefix the regex and u"" to prefix the test string and substitution.

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