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
Processing...

Test String

Code Generator

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = 'The emergence of two distinct leadership roles, the task leader and the socio-emotional leader, has been documented in the leadership literature since the 1950s (Bales, 1958). The separation of these roles has been seen as pragmatic in applications and is accepted as a finding in behavioral research. However, in practical applications, it leaves an organization with a challenge that can detract from leadership development, succession planning, and organizational flexibility. In this article, we will show that the division between these two types of leadership roles lies far deeper than has traditionally been thought. Recent research in neuroscience suggests that the division between task-oriented and socio-emotional leadership roles derives from a fundamental feature of our neurobiology: an antagonistic relationship between two large-scale cortical networks that is present in every individual. Neural activity in the task-positive network (TPN) tends to inhibit activity in the default mode network (DMN; Raichle et al., 2001; Fransson, 2005; Raichle and Snyder, 2007; Buckner et al., 2008), and vice versa (Uddin et al., 2009; Jack et al., 2012). The TPN is activated during a broad range of non-social tasks (Fox et al., 2005; Buckner et al., 2008; Uddin et al., 2009; Andrews-Hanna, 2012), and is thought to be important for problem solving, focusing of attention, making decisions, and control of action – in other words for getting things done. However, activation of the TPN also has a deleterious effect on other cognitive functions that are essential to leadership: it suppresses activity in the DMN. The DMN plays a central role in emotional self-awareness (Ochsner et al., 2005; Schilbach et al., 2008), social cognition (Schilbach et al., 2008; Jack et al., 2012; Mars et al., 2012), and ethical decision making (Koenigs et al., 2007; Bzdok et al., 2012; Jack et al., in press). It is also strongly linked to creativity and insightful problem solving (Subramaniam et al., 2009; Takeuchi et al., 2011). The antagonistic relationship between the TPN and DMN creates a fundamental neural constraint on cognition that is highly relevant to the different roles and capabilities that effective leaders must astutely juggle and deploy. An important consequence of this constraint is that an over-emphasis on task-oriented leadership can prove deleterious to an organization: in particular when openness to new ideas, people, emotions, and ethical concerns are important to success. On the other hand, the over emphasis on relationship oriented leadership may prove deleterious to focus and the execution of clearly defined goals.'; my $regex = qr/\([^\)]*,[^\)]*\)/imp; 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