by Grant Skinner

RegExr 0.3b Released: Share & Save RegEx!

I’m happy to announce that we have released RegExr 0.3b. The most significant feature additions are the ability to save your patterns locally, and to share patterns on a searchable community database of regular expressions.

RegExr is a tool for learning, editing, testing, and sharing regular expressions (RegEx or RegExp for short). It is available online at RegExr.com, and as a desktop application for Mac OSX, Windows or Linux at regexr.com/desktop. Its features include:

  • real time results: shows results as you type

  • code hinting: roll over your expression to see info on specific elements

  • detailed results: roll over a match to see details & view group info below

  • built in regex guide: double click entries to insert them into your expression

  • online & desktop: regexr.com or download the desktop version for Mac, Windows, or Linux

  • save your expressions: My Saved expressions are saved locally

  • share and rate expressions: search Community expressions and share your own

If you encounter any bugs or have any ideas for improving RegExr, please let us know in the comments below.

Grant Skinner

The "g" in gskinner. Also the "skinner".

@gskinner

If you enjoyed this, you might like these articles…

RegExr: Full Code Sense and Replace Support for RegEx Testing, RegExr Desktop Released: Regular Expression Tool in AIR, RegExr: Free Online RegEx Testing Tool, RegExr v2: Build, Test, & Learn RegEx

39 Comments

  1. Ryan Phelan May 26, 2009 at 8:00pm

    Looks nice, I love the community feature.

    It needs an app icon though.

  2. Robert M. Hall May 26, 2009 at 10:20pm

    Hey Grant – very cool and very handy – dig the community feature as well.

    I just happened to run across an interesting site the other day, regexlib.com – and they have a huge library of user submitted regular expressions and just so happens they have a webservice as well: http://regexlib.com/WebServices.asmx

    Might be interesting to tie into that at some point.

    See ya!

    Rob

  3. Grant Skinner May 26, 2009 at 10:23pm

    Hey Rob – I’ve seen RegExLib, it’s a great site. I didn’t know it had a web service though. Definitely might make sense to tie into that in the next version.

  4. Ian Liu May 27, 2009 at 5:21am

    Really good tool. I’ve been looking for this since EditPad (editpadpro.com). It’s a pity we don’t have these powerful searching interfaces on most GUIs 😉

  5. Rostislav May 27, 2009 at 6:15am

    I’ve been using RegExr often lately and I’m really happy with it. It’s the right tool for every AS3 developer who needs to experiment with regular expressions. Thanks!

  6. Mark Parson May 27, 2009 at 8:23am

    Great tool, thanks for sharing.

  7. Mark May 27, 2009 at 8:58am

    Fantastic Regex Tool. Thank you so much!

  8. Jens Wegar May 27, 2009 at 12:37pm

    Thanks! RegExr has been a valuable help to me several times already. Definetly part of my tool belt

  9. myrddin May 28, 2009 at 3:48am

    Nice ! Thanks you ! A little icon, for my Dock please ? 🙂

  11. Grant Skinner May 29, 2009 at 2:14pm

    thibaud – I’m not sure I understand the question. It looks just fine. RegExr was released almost 7 months before Ryan’s tool, and has a somewhat broader feature set, though his community features look a little more developed (this is something we’ll be working on over time).

  12. Grant Skinner May 29, 2009 at 2:16pm

    Thanks to everyone for the feedback. We’ll have a new version of the AIR app (probably w/o a new version number) with a nice new icon by Monday.

  13. judah June 4, 2009 at 11:32pm

    Awesome! A couple feature requests:

    1. Show the match and group captured content without having to hover the mouse.

    For example,

    2 capturing groups:

    1 (span|p) – span

    2 ([^”]*) – text-decoration:underline;font:bold

    etc

    2. stretchable right column

  14. Volgogradetzzz June 11, 2009 at 1:30am

    Hello, Grant! This is great tool. But can me explain something, please. For example I created some RegExp and text in text area is highlighted, it’s ok. But if this match is big and end of matching is not in the text area (i.e. highlighted text not fit in text area), then highlighting not appears, so it’s not possible to see any matches (. Is it bug or feature?

  15. 22samurai June 25, 2009 at 1:52pm

    This is a fantastic tool, I wish I had had it in college!

    I had a long string I was testing out and it didn’t finish the results. I was wondering, is there a limit on the string length in this version, or is the length limit from the regexp standard?

    Also, when doing a ^(abc)|(def)|(ghi)|….’ expression with a large number of groups, I would sometimes get something like this: “…group 29: xxx [[match]]; group 30 [NO MATCH]; ….. group 35: [[blank]] ” (where the [[ ]] represent my commentary – is this a bug error or a side-effect of a really long ORed (|ed) sequence?

    Thanks for your feedback.

  16. TK June 25, 2009 at 5:29pm

    Grant,

    Thanks so much for RegExr! I use it pretty much daily. Is there any way that in the next release, you could also include translation of regular expressions from language-to-language? Like perhaps a few lines of text at the bottom showing how the regular expression would be translated:

    AS3 ^.*$

    Perl: ^.*$

    Java: …

    etc. This would be really nice, as my main crutch is that I learned regular expressions in AS3 rather than these other languages (like perl) which are very heavily influenced by regular expressions.

    – TK

  17. sam rajesh July 3, 2009 at 3:05am

    G8!,

    It is a very nice tool and very useful.

    I have one question.

    The link is

    I want to get the link name. I used the pattern

    history|Img|file|link|animation|audio|a|img|script)[^>]*?(?>href|src)\s*?=\s*?[\”‘](.*?)[\”‘][^>]*?

    But It returns the “sam” alone.

    Is there any way to escape the single quote in link.

    Thanks

    Sam Rajesh E

  18. sam rajesh July 3, 2009 at 3:07am

    G8!,

    It is a very nice tool and very useful.

    I have one question.

    The link is “”

    I want to get the link name. I used the pattern

    history|Img|file|link|animation|audio|a|img|script)[^>]*?(?>href|src)\s*?=\s*?[\”‘](.*?)[\”‘][^>]*?

    But It returns the “sam” alone.

    Is there any way to escape the single quote in link.

    Thanks

    Sam Rajesh E

  19. TK July 14, 2009 at 11:36am

    RegExr will not allow two forward slashes in the editor. It’s the weirdest thing. Try entering the following pattern into the pattern text input: /[^/]?/

    What happens is the first slash will disappear when entering the second or third slash. Really weird. What I’m trying to do is match text between two slashes, and this makes it kind of hard 🙂

  20. Grant Skinner July 14, 2009 at 11:45am

    TK – try escaping the forward slashes “\/”

  21. Jon Toland August 12, 2009 at 8:49am

    After over a year of near daily use this is still one of my top 5 favourite tools outside Eclipse! If only there were a way to mock E4X outside of Firebug too 😉 Thanks for vetting your experiment into a serious application and sharing it with your fellow flashy regexers 🙂

  22. ZaiS October 30, 2009 at 1:50pm

    Where I can found saved regexps (without launching RegExr app) ?

  23. MaxArt November 15, 2009 at 9:03am

    It is indeed a great learning and testing tool. It has some issues, though. For example:

    1. Match: /^$/gm

    Replace: foo

    Text:

    “line 1

    line 2”

    It produces:

    “line 1

    foofoo

    line 2”

    It should be foo, not foofoo.

    2. It doesn’t display correctly capturing groups with lookbehinds in the bottom box.

    I’ll report any other bugs if it may help you. For the rest, it’s the best!

  24. Og2t November 24, 2009 at 8:06am

    I am trying to find a RegEx to change all H tags’ content to uppercase. Is it possible to pass $& to a function or perform .toUpperCase() on it?

    i.e.,

    change all some heading

    to SOME HEADING

    Any ideas? 🙂

  25. Og2t November 24, 2009 at 8:08am

    Oh, had stripped HTML in my previous comment.

    <h1 class=”header”>some heading</h1>

    <h1 class=”header”>SOME HEADING</h1>

    Thanks for the great tool Grant!

  26. wacha November 25, 2009 at 8:42am

    someone posted me this link but i cant see how the matched expression appears!!

    i put the pattern in the top blank box and the string in the lower(broader) one then clicked match but there was no change in the appearance of the tool

    does this mean there was no match or the tool is not meant to show the matched parts of the string???

  27. wacha November 25, 2009 at 8:47am

    I am using 0.3.1b

  28. MaxArt November 26, 2009 at 6:04am

    @Og2t, first you must be sure that your H1 tags don’t have any child nodes, or else you have to make a more complex algorhythm (something like a html parser). Then do like this: match the opening tag, match the closing tag, and then get the text inside.

    @wacha, just move the mouse over the matched text. A tooltip should appear.

  29. Ryan May 1, 2010 at 2:50pm

    I was just referred to your RegExp tool.

    Wow! For this, you are my hero.

    It makes it that much better to find it was born so close to home. (I’m in Calgary)

  30. Broady March 6, 2011 at 5:09am

    Nice thing, really… But I also recommend RegexpBuddy!

  31. John April 14, 2011 at 6:31am

    Grant,

    I just used RegExr for the billionth time and I just have to express my gratitude. Thank you for such a helpful tool!

  32. HellBoy82 April 28, 2011 at 12:30pm

    I’ve found a bug.
    If the RegExp is very long the balloon tip is not shown on the textbox.
    Excuse me for my english…

    Bye!

  33. HellBoy82 April 28, 2011 at 12:31pm

    I found a bug.
    If the RegExp is very long the balloon tip is not shown on the textbox.
    Excuse me for my english…

    Bye!

    P.S.: Very very very very great tool!

  34. marcus November 13, 2012 at 12:00am

    Thanks for this great tool! I am frequently using the RegExr for testing purpose. Helps me a lot!

  35. It'sMeMario November 22, 2012 at 12:55pm

    Hi there,
    just dropped by to say thanks for your great RegExr tool.
    The best non-php based Regex helper that I’ve found yet.

    Anyway Thanks and cheers!

  36. Mike June 22, 2013 at 8:59am

    Being a newbie, your RegExr is rrreally fantastic!
    Most likely it is of great help to for the experts as well.
    Am following the Regex tutorials of Jeffrey Way who is also using this tool.

    Again – great!

    Thank you so much.

  37. Tophe July 1, 2013 at 3:41am

    Where I can found saved regexps (without launching RegExr app) ?

  38. Reedyseth July 15, 2013 at 10:59am

    How come is that you decided to develop on Adobe Flash ?

    By the way this is a great tool !!

  39. jean September 12, 2013 at 1:16pm

    ^https?://.*\airfrance.com.br/

Comments are closed.