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

/
/
gsm

Test String

Substitution

Processing...

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

# If you'd like to omit non-matching lines from the result; add ';d' to the end of the expression. sed -E 's/(((^|\n*).{1,42}?)(\n))|(\n*.{1,42})( |\n|$)/\2\5\n/gsm;t' <<< "Below, we present an introduction to advanced regular expressions, with eight commonly used concepts and examples. Each example outlines a simple way to match patterns in complex strings. If you do not yet have experience with basic regular expressions, have a look at this article to get started. The syntax used here matches PHP regular expressions.Regular expressions (or regex) are a powerful way to traverse large strings in order to find information. They rely on underlying patterns in a string’s structure to work their magic. Unfortunately, simple regular expressions are unable to cope with complex patterns and symbols. To deal with this dilemma, you can use advanced regular expressions."

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 SED, please visit: https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/html_node/The-_0022s_0022-Command.html