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

$re = '/(?:\d[ -]*?){9}/m'; $str = 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer euismod blandit efficitur. Cras velit mi, vehicula eget velit sit amet, tempor condimentum magna. Aenean ut libero luctus, elementum nulla quis, bibendum erat. Vestibulum rutrum sit amet leo et scelerisque. Phasellus at elit cursu001-00-1234s, ullamcorper enim consequat, finibus augue. Donec fringilla nisi quis aliquam hendrerit. Mauris quis gravida lectus. Aenean blandit porttitor libero tempor commodo. Duis interdum congue mollis. Etiam eget scelerisque metus, a posuere orci. Nam ac eros eu lectus tincidunt viverra. In quis tellus viverra, venenatis eros ac, lacinia justo. Nulla facilisi. Nunc dignissim urna non eros varius iaculis. Vestibulum magna justo, maximus eu nulla nec, interdum facilisis diam. Praesent justo enim, consequat eget interdum ac, placerat laoreet est. Quisque sapien nisi, aliquet a cursus congue, faucibus id urna. Morbi vestibulum arcu non magna rutrum malesuada. Ut aliquam lacus in nulla 001001234 molestie hendrerit. Donec hendrerit sodales dignissim. Sed ac libero ullamcorper, pulvinar lorem id, sodales odio. Cras urna urna, molestie a risus sit amet, tincidunt bibendum lacus. Nullam in aliquet dui. Aenean suscipit vehicula commodo.'; preg_match_all($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