regular expression tester

Regular Expression Tester

Regular expression:

String to test:

PHP (POSIX) PERL JavaScript

hints

^	Beginning of string
$	End of string
.	Any single character
n	Exactly one "n"
[abc]	A single character: a, b, or c
[a-d]	Any lowercase character between a and z
[K-O]	Any uppercase character between K and O
[a-zA-Z]	Any alphabetical character (both lowercase or uppercase)
[0-9]	Any number
[^a-d]	Negation: matches any single character but lowercase characters between a and d
()	Subexpression: parentheses group strings together
|	Alternation: matches either the subexpression to the left or to the right
(a|b)	Either a or b
\	Escapes a special character for literal interpretation

repetition operators

{3}	Match exactly 3 occurences of the previous expression
{3,}	Match at least 3 or more occurences of the previous expression
{3,5}	Match at least 3 but no more than 5 occurences of the previous expression
*	Match 0 or more occurences of the previous expression - the same as {0,}
?	Match 0 or 1 occurences of the previous expression - the same as {0,1}
+	Match 1 or more occurences of the previous expression - the same as {1,}

character classes

[[:alnum:]]	Any alphanumeric character - not the same as [a-zA-Z0-9]. This includes also locale set characters (e.g. á, ñ)
[[:alpha:]]	Any alphabetical character - includes locale set characters
[[:blank:]]	Space or tab
[[:cntrl:]]	Any control character (^x, ^c, ^h etc.)
[[:digit:]]	Any digit - the same as [0-9]
[[:graph:]]	Any non-blank character (not spaces, control characters etc.)
[[:lower:]]	Any lowercase English character - the same as [a-z]
[[:print:]]	Like [[:graph:]] but includes space character
[[:punct:]]	Punction and other characters (@, parentheses, ...)
[[:space:]]	Any whitespace character (space, tab, carriage return, new line, new page)
[[:upper:]]	Any lowercase English character - the same as [A-Z]
[[:xdigit]]	Any hexadecimal numeric - the same as [0-9a-fA-F]
[[:<:]]	Beginning of word
[[:>:]]	End of word

metacharacters

.	\	^	$	*	+
?	|	(	)	[	{

Metacharacters need to be escaped (i.e. preceded by \) if you want to free them from their special meaning. No escaping is neccessary inside square brackets – everything between [] is interpreted literally.

further reading

perl.com

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