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

/
/
gm

Test String

Code Generator

Language

Generated Code

use strict; my $str = '--------------------------------------------- SHOULD PASS --------------------------------------------- - REGULAR INTEGER--------- 1 0 - REGULAR INTEGER MAX 16--------- 1234567890123456 - DECIMAL LEADING DOT--------- .22222 - DECIMAL WITH LEADING NUMBER--------- 1.22222 - 1k SEPARATOR --------- 1,220 - 1k SEPARATOR AND DECIMAL --------- 1,111.0 1,111,111.0 1,111,000,000,000.0 1,000,000,000.1234567890123456 - 1k SEPARATOR MAX 16 excluding DECIMAL--------- 1,111,000,111,000,111 - DECIMAL MAX 16 --------- 0.1234567890123456 - NUMBER MAX 16 and DECIMAL MAX 16 --------- 1234567890123456.1234567890123456 --------------------------------------------- SHOULD NOT PASS --------------------------------------------- - INT STARTING WITH ZERO 00 0123 - INT LEADING ZERO WITH COMMAS--------- 0,222 - INT STARTS WITH COMMA --------- ,111 - INT ENDING WITH COMMAS--------- 0,222, - TOO BIG INT 17 numerals --------- 12345678901234567.123456 - TOO BIG DECIMAL 17 numerals --------- 123456.12345678901234567 - DECIMAL AND COMMA REVERSED 1.220,220 - INT ENDS WITH DECIMAL --------- 1,111. 1111. - MULTIPLE DECIMAL --------- 1.22.22.22.22. - HAS TEXT --------- xyc1235xya xyc 1235 xya 123 xyc 1234 123xyc1234 .asd1223.123,234'; my $regex = qr/^(((\d{0,16})\.\d{1,16})|([0-9]{1})|([1-9]{1}\d{0,15})|[1-9]{1,3}(,\d{3}){1,}|(([1-9]{0,3},(\d{1,3}))*(\.\d{1,16}))|([1-9]{1,3},\d{3}))$/mp; if ( $str =~ /$regex/g ) { print "Whole match is ${^MATCH} and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[0] and \$+[0]\n"; # print "Capture Group 1 is $1 and its start/end positions can be obtained via \$-[1] and \$+[1]\n"; # print "Capture Group 2 is $2 ... and so on\n"; } # ${^POSTMATCH} and ${^PREMATCH} are also available with the use of '/p' # Named capture groups can be called via $+{name}

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 Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html