Examples

This section provides some practical examples of regular expressions. Double quotes are used as the delimiter for these examples.

The following regular expression matches any word of normal text:

 "[A-Za-z][a-z-]* " 

The regular expression contains a space at the end, after the *, to indicate the end of the word.

Two regular expressions that match phone numbers are:

 "^\([0-9]{3}\) [0-9]{3}-[0-9]{4}$" 

Matches phone numbers of the format (nnn) nnn-nnnn. Notice the parentheses are escaped. A more flexible regular expression might be:

 "^[0-9)( -]{7,20}$" 

Matches a string that can contain numbers, parentheses, spaces, and dots. The string must be at least 7 characters long but not more than 20 characters long.

To match a zip code, including zip+4, use:

 "^[0-9]{5}(\-[0-9]{4})?$" 

Matches a string of five numbers in the first section ([0-9]{ 5} ). The rest of the regular expression is enclosed in parentheses, making it a single unit that matches the +4 part. A ? after the closing parenthesis makes the entire +4 section optional.

The following regular expression matches a common email address.

 "^.+@.+\.(com|net)$" 

The regular expression includes a literal @ sign. A \ escapes the dot, making it a literal dot. Only .com and .net email addresses are accepted by this regular expression.