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 = #"(?i)[\da-f]{8}-[\da-f]{4}-[\da-f]{4}-[\da-f]{4}-[\da-f]{12}"# let regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: pattern, options: .anchorsMatchLines) let testString = #""" e876c866-1dd6-4c32-bf27-7ab673b57f75 d9da6fe0-cf69-40ae-9263-a115aac94441 bc783e58-3cac-4efb-92ee-560b696674c8 7b054304-c5dd-4595-a390-fd4f4b700e33 20255eea-5679-4fa7-8e65-4bab69425727 8039e4c6-4032-4065-8723-b0351d4a33f0 e9b3f927-b87a-459a-8a5b-caba3ccc8968 edbdb831-6e92-4241-8ba9-0bba71a1d7b0 087b5b52-97e6-4341-8976-59674ecbef2d d78be4c5-a0ba-4ef4-ab77-97585aa61436 """# 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