Regular Expressions 101

Pro

^start of line

Positive Lookahead(?=.{2})

.{2}any character (except for line terminators), repeated exactly 2 times

Negated Character Class[^*\s]*

*matches any number of characters outside the set below:

*the literal * (42₁₀ / 52₈ / 2A₁₆)

\sany whitespace character

\*the literal * (42₁₀ / 52₈ / 2A₁₆)

Negated Character Class[^*\s]*

*matches any number of characters outside the set below:

*the literal * (42₁₀ / 52₈ / 2A₁₆)

\sany whitespace character

$end of line

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

Ready to run

26 tokens

^(?=.{2})[^*\s]*\*[^*\s]*$