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

/
/
g

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/(?<ChapterAuthors>[A-Z\'a-z,\s]+?)(?: et al)?:(?<ChapterTitle>[A-Za-z,#\(\)\/0-9"’\'&\sö]+)\.\s?In\s?(?<BookAuthors>[A-Za-z,\s]+?)(?: et al)?:(?<BookTitle>[A-Za-z,#\(\)0-9"’\'&\s]+)\.\s?(?<Edition>\d+(?:rd|nd|st|th)\s(?:[eE]d|[eE]dition|))\.(?<Location>[-A-Za-z,.\s]+):(?<Publisher>[-A-Za-z,\(\)\/&\s]+)[\.]\s?(?<StartPage>\w?\d+\w?)-\s?(?<EndPage>\w?\d+\w?)[,\.;]\s?(?<Year>\d{4})/'; $str = 'Johnson M: Amino acids and proteins. In Burtis CA et al: Tietz Fundamentals of Clinical Chemistry. 6th ed. St. Louis: Saunders. 286-310, 2008 Dufour DR: Liver disease. In Burtis CA et al: Tietz Fundamentals of Clinical Chemistry. 6th ed. St. Louis: Saunders. 675-95, 2008 Cunningham FG et al: Diseases and abnormalities of the placenta. In: Licht J, ed. Williams\'s obstetrics. 19th ed. Norwalk, Conn: Appleton & Lange. 748-59, 1993 Tille PM: Enterobacteriaceae. In Tille PM: Bailey & Scott’s Diagnostic Microbiology. 13th ed. St. Louis: Mosby. 307-28, 2013'; preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0); // Print the entire match result var_dump($matches);

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 PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php