Regular Expressions 101

Explanation

Pro

<div id=the literal text <div id= (case sensitive)

""the literal " (34₁₀ / 42₈ / 22₁₆)

targetthe literal text target (case sensitive)

""the literal " (34₁₀ / 42₈ / 22₁₆)

Group 1((?'nested'<div)|</div(?'-nested')|[\w\W]*?)*

*repeats the group contents below any number of times:

1st Alternative(?'nested'<div)

Group nested(?'nested'<div)

<divthe literal text <div (case sensitive)

2nd Alternative</div(?'-nested')

</divthe literal text </div (case sensitive)

Balancing Group(?'-nested') — does not consume characters

3rd Alternative[\w\W]*?

Character Class[\w\W]*?

*?matches any number of characters from the set below:

\wa Unicode word character

\Wany character that is not a Unicode word character

</div>the literal text </div> (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

<div id=""target""((?'nested'<div)|</div(?'-nested')|[\w\W]*?)*</div>

New

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
	<head>
		<title>someTitle</title>
	</head>
	<body>
		<div class="outer">
			<h1>SomeHeader</h1>
			<div id="target">
				<h2>anotherHeader</h2>
				<div id="child">
					<div id="grand-child">
						<h4>HelloWorld</h4>
					</div>
				</div>
			</div>
		</div>
	</body>
</html>

Extraction

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
	<head>
		<title>someTitle</title>
	</head>
	<body>
		<div class="outer">
			<h1>SomeHeader</h1>
			<div id="target">
				<h2>anotherHeader</h2>
				<div id="child">
					<div id="grand-child">
						<h4>HelloWorld</h4>
					</div>
				</div>
			</div>
		</div>
	</body>
</html>