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

use strict; my $str = ' <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>PBC - New Distributor List</title> <meta name="description" content="Lifestyles PBC is an on-line tool to help our Distributors manage their business and achieve their goals." /> <meta name="keywords" content="Lifestyles, Lifestyles International, Personal Business Center, PBC"/> <link href="css/en.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> </head> <body bgcolor="#EAF4D1" leftmargin="0" topmargin="3" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"> <table border="0" align="center" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" bgcolor="#999999"> <tr> <td height="33" colspan="11" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><h2 style="margin: 10px">New Distributor List</h2> <p style="margin: 10px">Month: Sep.17</p></td> </tr> <tr> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>No.</strong></td> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>ID</strong></td> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Name</strong></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Home Phone</strong></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Business Phone</strong></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Cell Phone</strong></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Country</strong></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Email</strong></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Levels</strong></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Rank</strong></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><strong>Sponsor</strong></td> </tr> <tr> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">1</td> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">98000274072</td> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Jaroslava Adamcova</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">420 777642993</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Czech Republic</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><a href="mailto:mrs.crazy@post.cz">mrs.crazy@post.cz</a></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">19</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Distributor</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">80011630542</td> </tr> <tr> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">2</td> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">98000274172</td> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Lucie Hybsova</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">420 773252262</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Czech Republic</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><a href="mailto:hybsovaluca@seznam.cz">hybsovaluca@seznam.cz</a></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">19</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Distributor</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">80011630542</td> </tr> <tr> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">3</td> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">98000274475</td> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Miroslava Dobruska</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">420 739555554</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> 123456789</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">602230645</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Czech Republic</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><a href="mailto:dobruska.miroslava@seznam.cz">dobruska.miroslava@seznam.cz</a></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">18</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Distributor</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">13980242</td> </tr> <tr> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">4</td> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">98000274484</td> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Dana Barochova</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">420 774312227</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Czech Republic</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><a href="mailto:dbaro@seznam.cz">dbaro@seznam.cz</a></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">20</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Distributor</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">98000203618</td> </tr> <tr> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">5</td> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">98000275105</td> <td height="27" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Tibor Abel</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">420 777268915</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Czech Republic</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><a href="mailto:abeltibor@gmail.com">abeltibor@gmail.com</a></td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">19</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Distributor</td> <td align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">80011630542</td> </tr> </table> </body> </html> <script>window.focus()</script> '; my $regex = qr/<tr[^>]*> [^<]*<td[^>]*>(?<No>[^<]*)<\/td> [^<]*<td[^>]*>(?<ID>[^<]*)<\/td> [^<]*<td[^>]*>(?<Name>[^<]*)<\/td> [^<]*<td[^>]*>(?<Home_phone>[^<]*)<\/td> [^<]*<td[^>]*>(?<Work_phone>[^<]*)<\/td> [^<]*<td[^>]*>(?<Cell_phone>[^<]*)<\/td> [^<]*<td[^>]*>(?<Country>[^<]*)<\/td> [^<]*<td[^>]*>[^<]*<a[^>]*>(?<Email>[^<]*)<\/a[^>]*><\/td> [^<]*<td[^>]*>(?<Levels>[^<]*)<\/td> [^<]*<td[^>]*>(?<Rank>[^<]*)<\/td> [^<]*<td[^>]*>(?<Sponzor_ID>[^<]*)<\/td>/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