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

/
/
gm

Test String

Substitution

Processing...

Code Generator

Generated Code

$re = '/(<Group id="\d+">\n\t\t\t<Name>)(\w+)_(\w+)(<\/Name>\n\t\t\t<Description>)([\w+\s]+)\s-\s([\w+\s]+)(<\/Description>)/m'; $str = ' <Group id="100"> <Name>generalAlarm_Group01</Name> <Description>Group General Alarm 01</Description> <Type>poll</Type> <Content multipleGet="true"> <Param>100</Param> <Param>101</Param> <Param>103</Param> <Param>104</Param> <Param>120</Param> <Param>121</Param> </Content> </Group> <Group id="110"> <Name>generalConfig_Group01</Name> <Description>Group General Config 01</Description> <Type>poll</Type> <Content multipleGet="true"> <Param>105</Param> <Param>106</Param> <Param>107</Param> <Param>108</Param> <Param>109</Param> <Param>110</Param> <Param>111</Param> <Param>112</Param> <Param>113</Param> </Content> </Group> <Group id="1000"> <Name>firstPriorityAlarmConfig_Group1000</Name> <Description>First Priority Alarm Config Table - Group 1000</Description> <Type>poll</Type> <Content multipleGet="true"> <Param>1000</Param> </Content> </Group> <Group id="2000"> <Name>secondPriorityAlarmConfig_Group2000</Name> <Description>Second Priority Alarm Config Table - Group 2000</Description> <Type>poll</Type> <Content multipleGet="true"> <Param>2000</Param> </Content> </Group> <Group id="3000"> <Name>thirdPriorityAlarmConfig_Group3000</Name> <Description>Third Priority Alarm Config Table - Group 3000</Description> <Type>poll</Type> <Content multipleGet="true"> <Param>3000</Param> </Content> </Group>'; $subst = "$1$3_$2$4$6 - $5$7"; $result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str); echo "The result of the substitution is ".$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 PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php