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

/
/
mg

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = '*** jeo **** UK -+- "Channel Name\' | HD Channel | FHD zeebo BBC US = LONG chanell NaME | FHD US - SkySports | HD ES | Chan-nel Name HD IT| My long super channel Name | HD ks lets sae my channel | hd JS: My channel Name | HD JS: Sky Cinema Action UK: Sky Cinema Gold | FHD JA: Some other channel :HD UK: this channel name ||jdh AH: does it work for all?? |HD UJ: Dont call me dave ****** My service Provider DE: Doesn\'t handle weird _String | FHD UK: so howcanedo | HD KD: 5g0fff9 98hf9 ?|FHD UR: this is okay mostly | FHD EE) but does it always work? | vip ****** My service Provider ****vip re: hahahaahahaahahaha 32 hd | hd jg: will it work | dd ur: rte1 | FHD IR: M-Y CHAN-NEL NAME |VIP IR: MY CHANNEL NAME | FHD le let me get this channel" |FHD UK MY CHANNNEL NAME | FHD el haha get my name | jfh'; my $regex = qr/(?!^\*)+?(?:^\W*\r*)(?<country>[\w]{0,1}[^\r\n])(?:[^\w*]+)(?<channel>[\w?,'\"\-_ ]*(?<![^\w?!])).*?(?<tag>\w*$)|(?<channel2>^[\w?,'\"\-_]+(?<![^\w?!]))[^\w\r\n\*\t\f\v]*(?<tag2>\w+$)?/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