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

Substitution

Processing...

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

$re = '/<span.*>(.*?)<\/span>/'; $str = '<!--WYSIWYG content - do not remove this comment, and never use this identical text in your topics--> <p>-- <span class="WYSIWYG_LINK">Main.SeanOReilly</span> - 2017-08-30</p> <h1 class="TML">Technology used</h1> <p><span class="WYSIWYG_LINK">[[http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/rest-data-services/overview/index.html][ORDS (Oracle REST data services)]]</span></p> <h1 class="TML"></h1> <h1 class="TML">REST concepts</h1> <table border="1" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td>GET</td> <td class="align-left" style="text-align: left">select</td> </tr> <tr> <td>POST</td> <td class="align-left" style="text-align: left">insert</td> </tr> <tr> <td>PUT</td> <td class="align-left" style="text-align: left">update</td> </tr> <tr> <td>DELETE</td> <td class="align-left" style="text-align: left">delete</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <h1 class="TML"></h1> <h1 class="TML">Settings</h1> <p><img title="ORDS_ords_admin.JPG" src="http://itwiki.core.kmtltd.net.au/pub/Main/SupplyChainIntl/RESTDataAPI/ORDS_ords_admin.JPG" alt="ORDS_ords_admin.JPG" width="356" height="281" /></p> <p><img title="ORDS_ords_dev.JPG" src="http://itwiki.core.kmtltd.net.au/pub/Main/SupplyChainIntl/RESTDataAPI/ORDS_ords_dev.JPG" alt="ORDS_ords_dev.JPG" width="356" height="281" /></p> <p><span class="WYSIWYG_LINK">[[http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/rest-data-services/learnmore/index.html]]</span></p> <h1 class="TML">Kmart Developer website</h1> <p><span class="WYSIWYG_LINK">[[https://developer.core.kmtltd.net.au/]]</span></p> <h1 class="TML">Data dictionary</h1> <p><span class="WYSIWYG_LINK">ProductNumber</span></p> <p><span class="WYSIWYG_LINK">UnitQuantity</span></p> <h1 class="TML">Development notes</h1> <p>\\\\warthog\\grpdata\\Kmart IT Team\\4. Supply Chain &amp; Finance Delivery\\1. GIF\\1. Apps &amp; Systems\\5. Other\\Tasks\\170823 API</p> <h1 class="TML">Examples</h1> <h2 class="TML"><span class="WYSIWYG_LINK">AutoREST</span></h2> <p><span class="WYSIWYG_LINK">http://kuttsi901:8080/ords/exuts/container/</span></p> <h2 class="TML">Configured REST</h2> <p><span class="WYSIWYG_LINK">http://kuttsi901:8080/ords/exuts//v1/container/MAEU8378519</span></p>'; $subst = "\1"; $result = preg_replace($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