Regular Expressions 101

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  • Unit Tests (24)

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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

/
/
gmx

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

# coding=utf8 # the above tag defines encoding for this document and is for Python 2.x compatibility import re regex = r""" (?#regexp & naming based on RFC5424) ^<(?<priority>\d|\d{2}|1[1-8]\d|19[01])>(?<version>\d{1,2})\s (?<timestamp>-|(?<fullyear>[12]\d{3})-(?<month>0\d|[1][012])-(?<mday>[012]\d|3[01])T(?<hour>[01]\d|2[0-4]):(?<minute>[0-5]\d):(?<second>[0-5]\d|60)(?#60seconds can be used for leap year!)(?:\.(?<secfrac>\d{1,6}))?(?<numoffset>Z|[+-]\d{2}:\d{2})(?#=timezone))\s (?<hostname>[\S]{1,255})\s (?<appname>[\S]{1,48})\s (?<procid>[\S]{1,128})\s (?<msgid>[\S]{1,32})\s (?<structureddata>-|(?:\[.+?(?<!\\)\])+) (?:\s(?<msg>.+))?$ """ test_str = ("<165>1 2003-08-24T05:14:15.000003-07:00 192.0.2.1 myproc 8710 - - %% It's time to make the do-nuts.\n\n" "<34>1 2003-10-11T22:14:15.003Z mymachine.example.com su - ID47 - BOM'su root' failed for lonvick on /dev/pts/8\n\n" "<190>1 2003-10-11T22:14:15.003Z mymachine.example.com evntslog - ID47 [exampleSDID@32473 iut=\"3\" eventSource=\"Application\" eventID=\"10\\] 11\"] BOMAn application event log entry..[ ] sadasd\n\n" "<25>1 2003-10-11T22:14:15.003Z mymachine.example.com evntslog - ID47 [exampleSDID@32473 iut=\"3\" eventSource=\"Application\" eventID=\"1011\"][examplePriority@32473 class=\"high\"]\n\n" "<1>12 - mymachine - - ID47 - asd asdaasd") matches = re.finditer(regex, test_str, re.MULTILINE | re.VERBOSE) for matchNum, match in enumerate(matches, start=1): print ("Match {matchNum} was found at {start}-{end}: {match}".format(matchNum = matchNum, start = match.start(), end = match.end(), match = match.group())) for groupNum in range(0, len(match.groups())): groupNum = groupNum + 1 print ("Group {groupNum} found at {start}-{end}: {group}".format(groupNum = groupNum, start = match.start(groupNum), end = match.end(groupNum), group = match.group(groupNum))) # Note: for Python 2.7 compatibility, use ur"" to prefix the regex and u"" to prefix the test string and substitution.

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 Python, please visit: https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html