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

r"
"
gi

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"(\\n)|(\\r)|(\\t)|(\u00A9)|([!\"#$%&()*+,-./:;<=>?@\[\\\]^_`{|}~])" test_str = ("Welcome to RegExr v2.0 by gskinner.com!\n\n" "Edit the Expression & Text to see matches. Roll over matches or the expression for details. Undo mistakes with cmd-z. Save & Share expressions with friends or the Community. A full Reference & Help is available in the Library, or watch the video Tutorial.\n\n" "Sample text for testing:\n" "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ\n" "0123456789 +-.,!@#$%^&*();\\/|<>'\"\"\n" "12345 -98.7 3.141 .6180 9,000 +42\n" "555.123.4567 +1-(800)-555-2468\n" "foo@demo.net bar.ba@test.co.uk\n" "www.demo.com http://foo.co.uk/\n" "http://regexr.com/foo.html?q=bar\n\n" "\"I'd 'give' A'rdor a TWO THUMBS UP!\\nLove the food. esp the Indian and total value for money!\\nThe drinks are well made and the food is to die for. \\nI've ubeen there about 5 times - mix of at night and for lunch.\\nDuring the night, its like the new watering hole for the young crowd, Love the energy it has. \\nThe ambiance is great.\\nFor those of you who have not been there yet, what are you waiting for?!\\n\\nI'll totally recommend this place to anyone!\"") matches = re.finditer(regex, test_str, re.IGNORECASE) 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