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

/
/
g

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"Audit (?P<audit_outcome>Success|Failure),(?P<log_date>.*)\s+(?P<log_time>.*),Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing,(?P<event_id>\d+),(?P<category>.*),(?P<event_message>.*)\s+Subject:\s+Security ID:\s+(?P<subject_security_id>.*)\s+Account Name:\s+(?P<subject_account_name>.*)\s+Account Domain:\s+(?P<subject_account_domain>.*)\s+Logon ID:\s+(?P<subject_logon_id>.*)\s+Process Information:\s+Process ID:\s+(?P<PI_process_id>.*)\s+Name:\s+(?P<PI_name>.*)\s+Previous Time:\s+(?P<previous_time>.*)\s+New Time:\s+(?P<new_time>.*)\s+(?P<audit_message>.*)" test_str = ("Audit Success,29/08/2017 09:42:50,Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing,4616,Security State Change,\"The system time was changed.\n\n" "Subject:\n" " Security ID: LOCAL SERVICE\n" " Account Name: LOCAL SERVICE\n" " Account Domain: NT AUTHORITY\n" " Logon ID: 0x3E5\n\n" "Process Information:\n" " Process ID: 0x3e8\n" " Name: C:\\Windows\\System32\\svchost.exe\n\n" "Previous Time: ‎2017‎-‎08‎-‎29T01:42:49.858143700Z\n" "New Time: ‎2017‎-‎08‎-‎29T01:42:49.520000000Z\n\n" "This event is generated when the system time is changed. It is normal for the Windows Time Service, which runs with System privilege, to change the system time on a regular basis. Other system time changes may be indicative of attempts to tamper with the computer.\"") matches = re.finditer(regex, test_str) 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