Regular Expressions: A Beginner-Friendly Guide
Learn the basics of regular expressions (regex) with practical examples. Master pattern matching for text processing and validation.
2025-01-086 min
What are Regular Expressions?
Regular expressions (regex) are patterns used to match character combinations in text. They're essential for text processing, validation, and search operations.
Basic Regex Syntax
Character Classes
. - Any character except newline\d - Any digit (0-9)\w - Word character (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _)\s - Whitespace characterQuantifiers
* - Zero or more+ - One or more? - Zero or one{n} - Exactly n times{n,m} - Between n and m timesAnchors
^ - Start of string$ - End of string\b - Word boundaryCommon Regex Patterns
Email Validation
^[\w.-]+@[\w.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}$Phone Number
^\+?[1-9]\d{1,14}$URL Pattern
^https?://[\w.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}