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

/
/
gm

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = 'ATU12345678 BE1234567890 BG123456789 HR12345678901 CY12345678X CZ12345678 DK12345678 EE123456789 FI12345678 FR12345678901 DE123456789 EL123456789 HU12345678 IE1234567WA IT12345678901 LV12345678901 LT123456789 LU12345678 MT12345678 NL123456789B01 PL1234567890 PT123456789 RO1234567890 SK1234567890 SI12345678 ESX12345678 SE123456789012'; my $regex = qr/\b(ATU\d{8}|BE[01]\d{9}|BG\d{9,10}|CY\d{8}[LX]|CZ\d{8,10}|DE\d{9}|DK\d{8}|EE\d{9}|EL\d{9}|ES[\dA-Z]\d{7}[\dA-Z]|FI\d{8}|FR[\dA-Z]{2}\d{9}|HR\d{11}|HU\d{8}|IE\d{7}[A-Z]{2}|IT\d{11}|LT(\d{9}|\d{12})|LU\d{8}|LV\d{11}|MT\d{8}|NL\d{9}B\d{2}|PL\d{10}|PT\d{9}|RO\d{2,10}|SE\d{12}|SI\d{8}|SK\d{10})\b/mp; 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