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

/
/
g

Test String

Code Generator

Generated Code

$re = '/\{([^\{\}]|(?R))*\}/'; $str = 'Wind energy is the kinetic energy of air in motion, also called wind. Total wind energy flowing through an imaginary surface with area A during the time t is: {\\displaystyle E={\\frac {1}{2}}mv^{2}={\\frac {1}{2}}(Avt\\rho )v^{2}={\\frac {1}{2}}At\\rho v^{3},} E={\\frac {1}{2}}mv^{2}={\\frac {1}{2}}(Avt\\rho )v^{2}={\\frac {1}{2}}At\\rho v^{3},[248] where ρ is the density of air; v is the wind speed; Avt is the volume of air passing through A (which is considered perpendicular to the direction of the wind); Avtρ is therefore the mass m passing through "A". Note that ½ ρv2 is the kinetic energy of the moving air per unit volume. Power is energy per unit time, so the wind power incident on A (e.g. equal to the rotor area of a wind turbine) is: {\\displaystyle P={\\frac {E}{t}}={\\frac {1}{2}}A\\rho v^{3}.} P={\\frac {E}{t}}={\\frac {1}{2}}A\\rho v^{3}.[248] Wind power in an open air stream is thus proportional to the third power of the wind speed; the available power increases eightfold when the wind speed doubles. Wind turbines for grid electric power therefore need to be especially efficient at greater wind speeds.'; preg_match_all($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