Regular Expressions 101

Explanation

Pro

<ref>the literal text <ref> (case sensitive)

Non-Capturing Group(?:(?!<\/ref>).)*

*repeats the group contents below any number of times:

Negative Lookahead(?!<\/ref>)

<the literal < (60₁₀ / 74₈ / 3C₁₆)

\/the literal / (47₁₀ / 57₈ / 2F₁₆)

ref>the literal text ref> (case sensitive)

.any character (except for line terminators)

examplethe literal text example (case sensitive)

\.the literal . (46₁₀ / 56₈ / 2E₁₆)

comthe literal text com (case sensitive)

.*?any character (except for line terminators), repeated any number of times

<the literal < (60₁₀ / 74₈ / 3C₁₆)

\/the literal / (47₁₀ / 57₈ / 2F₁₆)

ref>the literal text ref> (case sensitive)

Global pattern flags

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

m modifier: multiline. Causes ^ and $ to match the start and end of each line, not only the start and end of the string

Match Information

Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.

Quick Reference

25 tokens

Regular Expression

<ref>(?:(?!<\/ref>).)*example\.com.*?<\/ref>

<ref>{{cite web|title=Foo|url=https://zzz.com/foo}}</ref> blah-blah <ref>{{cite web|title=Bar|url=https://example.com/bar}}</ref> some more blah <ref>{{cite web|title=Foo|url=https://pqr.com/foo}}</ref>

Substitution

<ref>{{cite web|title=Foo|url=https://zzz.com/foo}}</ref> blah-blah <ref>{{cite web|title=Bar|url=https://example.com/bar}}</ref> some more blah <ref>{{cite web|title=Foo|url=https://pqr.com/foo}}</ref>