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

import Foundation let pattern = #"^(?:(((Jan(uary)?|Ma(r(ch)?|y)|Jul(y)?|Aug(ust)?|Oct(ober)?|Dec(ember)?)\ 31)|((Jan(uary)?|Ma(r(ch)?|y)|Apr(il)?|Ju((ly?)|(ne?))|Aug(ust)?|Oct(ober)?|(Sep|Nov|Dec)(ember)?|(Sep))\ (0?[1-9]|([12]\d)|30))|(Feb(ruary)?\ (0?[1-9]|1\d|2[0-8]|(29(?=,\ ((1[6-9]|[2-9]\d)(0[48]|[2468][048]|[13579][26])|((16|[2468][048]|[3579][26])00)))))))\ )(?:[0-1]?[0-9]|[2][1-4]):[0-5]?[0-9]:[0-5]?[0-9]"# let regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: pattern, options: .anchorsMatchLines) let testString = #""" Sep 3 15:10:54 192.168.99.1 Checkpoint: 3Sep2007 15:10:28 accept 192.168.99.1 >eth2 rule: 9; rule_uid: {11111111-2222-3333-8A67-F54CED606693}; service_id: domain-udp; src: 200.14.120.9; dst: 192.168.99.184; proto: udp; product: VPN-1 & FireWall-1; service: 53; s_port: 32769; """# let stringRange = NSRange(location: 0, length: testString.utf16.count) let matches = regex.matches(in: testString, range: stringRange) var result: [[String]] = [] for match in matches { var groups: [String] = [] for rangeIndex in 1 ..< match.numberOfRanges { let nsRange = match.range(at: rangeIndex) guard !NSEqualRanges(nsRange, NSMakeRange(NSNotFound, 0)) else { continue } let string = (testString as NSString).substring(with: nsRange) groups.append(string) } if !groups.isEmpty { result.append(groups) } } print(result)

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 Swift 5.2, please visit: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nsregularexpression