

Only valid captures are explicitly named groups (e.g. When used, unnamed groups (like (\d+)) are not captured. NET regex specific modifier expressed with n. NET, Python, Ruby Oniguruma, ICU, Boost regex flavors one can use (?#.) comments inside the regex pattern. Usually, the whitespace inside character classes ( ) is treated as a literal whitespace, except in Java.Īlso, it is worth mentioning that in PCRE. Unescaped white space in the regular expression pattern is ignored, escape it to make it a part of the pattern. Note the # symbol is escaped to denote a literal # that is part of a pattern. + # the string should have 1 or more alphanumeric symbolsĮxample of a string: #word1here. (?!\d+$) # the string cannot consist of digits only (?=\D*\d) # the string should contain at least 1 digit The modifier that allows using whitespace inside some parts of the pattern to format it for better readability and to allow comments starting with #: /(?x)^ # start of string VERBOSE / COMMENT / IgnorePatternWhitespace modifier Also, UNICODE_CHARACTER_CLASS can be used to make matching Unicode aware. Some more on this can be found at Case-Insensitive Matching in Java RegEx. Pattern p = pile("YOUR_REGEX", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE | Pattern.UNICODE_CASE) ). Unicode-aware case-insensitive matching can be enabled by specifying the UNICODE_CASE flag in conjunction with this ( CASE_INSENSITIVE) flag.

In Java, by default, case-insensitive matching assumes that only characters in the US-ASCII charset are being matched. The inline version of the modifier looks like (?i). The common modifier to ignore case is i: /fog/i \Astring\Z/ will find a match in "string\n") (except Python, where \Z behavior is equal to \z and \z anchor is not supported). The difference between the \Z and \z is that the former can match before the final newline (LF) symbol at the end of the string (e.g. You need to use \A to define the whole document/string start and \z to denote the document/string end.

in Ruby), and also in almost any text editors supporting regexps, the ^ and $ anchors denote line start/end positions by default. Will find all lines that start with My Line, then contain a space and 1+ digits up to the line end.Īn inline version: (?m) (e.g. Ruby) that uses m to denote a DOTALL modifier)) that makes ^ and $ anchors match the start/end of a line, not the start/end of the whole string.

MULTILINE modifierĪnother example is a MULTILINE modifier (usually expressed with m flag (not in Oniguruma (e.g. s with a catch-all character class like, or a not nothing character class (however, this construct will be treated as an error by all other engines, and is thus not portable). In order to achieve the same effect, a workaround is necessary, e. can never be allowed to match a newline character. Note: JavaScript does not provide a DOTALL modifier, so a. Note: In Ruby, the DOTALL modifier equivalent is m, Regexp::MULTILINE modifier (e.g. This Perl-style regex will match a string like "cat fled from\na dog" capturing "fled from\na" into Group 1.Īn inline version: (?s) (e.g. enabling it to match a newline (LF) symbol: /cat (.*?) dog/s Permits whitespace and comments in a pattern.Įnables the Unicode version of Predefined character classes and POSIX character classes.Ī regex pattern where a DOTALL modifier (in most regex flavors expressed with s) changes the behavior of. Meta-character ^ matches only at the start
