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
  • Match everything enclosed
    (?:...)
  • Capture everything enclosed
    (...)
  • 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 = 'ACTIONS: [ { LONGITUDES: { SHUTTLE_LON_A6: [ 748, [ \'CI\', 76.5, 980.5 ] ], SHUTTLE_LON_A5: [ 271, [ \'CL\', 0, 76.5 ], [ \'CI\', 76.5, 980.5 ], [ \'CL\', 980.5, 1057 ] ], SHUTTLE_LON_A4: [ 129 ], SHUTTLE_LON_A3: [ 107 ], SHUTTLE_LON_A2: [ -35 ], SHUTTLE_LON_A1: [ -57 ] }, LATITUDES: { SHUTTLE_LAT_1: [ [ 1057 ] ] } }, { LONGITUDES: { SHUTTLE_LON_A6: [ 978, [ \'CL\', 76.5, 980.5 ] ], SHUTTLE_LON_A5: [ 727, [ \'CL\', 0, 76.5 ], [ \'CI\', 76.5, 980.5 ], [ \'CL\', 980.5, 1057 ] ], SHUTTLE_LON_A4: [ 250, [ \'CI\', 76.5, 980.5 ] ], SHUTTLE_LON_A3: [ 20, [ \'CL\', 76.5, 980.5 ] ], SHUTTLE_LON_A2: [ -122 ], SHUTTLE_LON_A1: [ -144 ] }, LATITUDES: { SHUTTLE_LAT_1: [ [ 20.5, [ \'CI\', 0, 1100 ] ], [ 34.5, [ \'CI\', 0, 1100 ] ], [ 58.5, [ \'CI\', 0, 1100 ] ], [ 76.5, [ \'CL\', 0, 271 ], [ \'CI\', 271, 727 ], [ \'CL\', 727, 1100 ] ], [ 980.5, [ \'CL\', 0, 271 ], [ \'CI\', 271, 727 ], [ \'CL\', 727, 1100 ] ], [ 998.5, [ \'CI\', 0, 1100 ] ], [ 1022.5, [ \'CI\', 0, 1100 ] ], [ 1036.5, [ \'CI\', 0, 1100 ] ], [ 1057, [ \'CL\', 0, 1100 ] ], [ 1057 ] ] } } ] } ]'; my $regex = qr`(S\w.*\d[:])|(([0-9.]+|(-[0-9.]+)))|([A-Z]{2}\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