Regexp

A Regexp holds a regular expression, used to match a pattern against strings. Regexps are created using the /.../ and %r{...} literals, and by the Regexp::new constructor.

Regular expressions (regexps) are patterns which describe the contents of a string. They're used for testing whether a string contains a given pattern, or extracting the portions that match. They are created with the /pat/ and %r{pat} literals or the Regexp.new constructor.

A regexp is usually delimited with forward slashes (/). For example:

/hay/ =~ 'haystack'   #=> 0
/y/.match('haystack') #=> #<MatchData "y">

If a string contains the pattern it is said to match. A literal string matches itself.

Here 'haystack' does not contain the pattern 'needle', so it doesn't match:

/needle/.match('haystack') #=> nil

Here 'haystack' contains the pattern 'hay', so it matches:

/hay/.match('haystack')    #=> #<MatchData "hay">

Specifically, /st/ requires that the string contains the letter s followed by the letter t, so it matches haystack, also.

`=~` and `Regexp#match`¶ ↑

Pattern matching may be achieved by using =~ operator or Regexp#match method.

`=~` operator¶ ↑

=~ is Ruby's basic pattern-matching operator. When one operand is a regular expression and the other is a string then the regular expression is used as a pattern to match against the string. (This operator is equivalently defined by Regexp and String so the order of String and Regexp do not matter. Other classes may have different implementations of =~.) If a match is found, the operator returns index of first match in string, otherwise it returns nil.

/hay/ =~ 'haystack'   #=> 0
'haystack' =~ /hay/   #=> 0
/a/   =~ 'haystack'   #=> 1
/u/   =~ 'haystack'   #=> nil

Using =~ operator with a String and Regexp the $~ global variable is set after a successful match. $~ holds a MatchData object. Regexp.last_match is equivalent to $~.

`Regexp#match` method¶ ↑

The match method returns a MatchData object:

/st/.match('haystack')   #=> #<MatchData "st">

Metacharacters and Escapes¶ ↑

The following are metacharacters (, ), [, ], {, }, ., ?, +, *. They have a specific meaning when appearing in a pattern. To match them literally they must be backslash-escaped. To match a backslash literally, backslash-escape it: \\.

/1 \+ 2 = 3\?/.match('Does 1 + 2 = 3?') #=> #<MatchData "1 + 2 = 3?">
/a\\\\b/.match('a\\\\b')                    #=> #<MatchData "a\\b">

Patterns behave like double-quoted strings so can contain the same backslash escapes.

/\s\u{6771 4eac 90fd}/.match("Go to 東京都")
    #=> #<MatchData " 東京都">

Arbitrary Ruby expressions can be embedded into patterns with the #{...} construct.

place = "東京都"
/#{place}/.match("Go to 東京都")
    #=> #<MatchData "東京都">

Character Classes¶ ↑

A character class is delimited with square brackets ([, ]) and lists characters that may appear at that point in the match. /[ab]/ means a or b, as opposed to /ab/ which means a followed by b.

/W[aeiou]rd/.match("Word") #=> #<MatchData "Word">

Within a character class the hyphen (-) is a metacharacter denoting an inclusive range of characters. [abcd] is equivalent to [a-d]. A range can be followed by another range, so [abcdwxyz] is equivalent to [a-dw-z]. The order in which ranges or individual characters appear inside a character class is irrelevant.

/[0-9a-f]/.match('9f') #=> #<MatchData "9">
/[9f]/.match('9f')     #=> #<MatchData "9">

If the first character of a character class is a caret (^) the class is inverted: it matches any character except those named.

/[^a-eg-z]/.match('f') #=> #<MatchData "f">

A character class may contain another character class. By itself this isn't useful because [a-z[0-9]] describes the same set as [a-z0-9]. However, character classes also support the && operator which performs set intersection on its arguments. The two can be combined as follows:

/[a-w&&[^c-g]z]/ # ([a-w] AND ([^c-g] OR z))

This is equivalent to:

/[abh-w]/

The following metacharacters also behave like character classes:

/./ - Any character except a newline.
/./m - Any character (the m modifier enables multiline mode)
/\w/ - A word character ([a-zA-Z0-9_])
/\W/ - A non-word character ([^a-zA-Z0-9_]). Please take a look at Bug #4044 if using /\W/ with the /i modifier.
/\d/ - A digit character ([0-9])
/\D/ - A non-digit character ([^0-9])
/\h/ - A hexdigit character ([0-9a-fA-F])
/\H/ - A non-hexdigit character ([^0-9a-fA-F])
/\s/ - A whitespace character: /[ \t\r\n\f\v]/
/\S/ - A non-whitespace character: /[^ \t\r\n\f\v]/

POSIX bracket expressions are also similar to character classes. They provide a portable alternative to the above, with the added benefit that they encompass non-ASCII characters. For instance, /\d/ matches only the ASCII decimal digits (0-9); whereas /[[:digit:]]/ matches any character in the Unicode Nd category.

/[[:alnum:]]/ - Alphabetic and numeric character
/[[:alpha:]]/ - Alphabetic character
/[[:blank:]]/ - Space or tab
/[[:cntrl:]]/ - Control character
/[[:digit:]]/ - Digit
/[[:graph:]]/ - Non-blank character (excludes spaces, control characters, and similar)
/[[:lower:]]/ - Lowercase alphabetical character
/[[:print:]]/ - Like [:graph:], but includes the space character
/[[:punct:]]/ - Punctuation character
/[[:space:]]/ - Whitespace character ([:blank:], newline, carriage return, etc.)
/[[:upper:]]/ - Uppercase alphabetical
/[[:xdigit:]]/ - Digit allowed in a hexadecimal number (i.e., 0-9a-fA-F)

Ruby also supports the following non-POSIX character classes:

/[[:word:]]/ - A character in one of the following Unicode general categories Letter, Mark, Number, Connector_Punctuation

/[[:ascii:]]/ - A character in the ASCII character set

# U+06F2 is "EXTENDED ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT TWO"
/[[:digit:]]/.match("\u06F2")    #=> #<MatchData "\u{06F2}">
/[[:upper:]][[:lower:]]/.match("Hello") #=> #<MatchData "He">
/[[:xdigit:]][[:xdigit:]]/.match("A6")  #=> #<MatchData "A6">

Repetition¶ ↑

The constructs described so far match a single character. They can be followed by a repetition metacharacter to specify how many times they need to occur. Such metacharacters are called quantifiers.

* - Zero or more times
+ - One or more times
? - Zero or one times (optional)
{n} - Exactly n times
{n,} - n or more times
{,m} - m or less times
{n,m} - At least n and at most m times

At least one uppercase character ('H'), at least one lowercase character ('e'), two 'l' characters, then one 'o':

"Hello".match(/[[:upper:]]+[[:lower:]]+l{2}o/) #=> #<MatchData "Hello">

Repetition is greedy by default: as many occurrences as possible are matched while still allowing the overall match to succeed. By contrast, lazy matching makes the minimal amount of matches necessary for overall success. A greedy metacharacter can be made lazy by following it with ?.

Both patterns below match the string. The first uses a greedy quantifier so '.+' matches '<a><b>'; the second uses a lazy quantifier so '.+?' matches '<a>':

/<.+>/.match("<a><b>")  #=> #<MatchData "<a><b>">
/<.+?>/.match("<a><b>") #=> #<MatchData "<a>">

A quantifier followed by + matches possessively: once it has matched it does not backtrack. They behave like greedy quantifiers, but having matched they refuse to “give up” their match even if this jeopardises the overall match.

Capturing¶ ↑

Parentheses can be used for capturing. The text enclosed by the n<sup>th</sup> group of parentheses can be subsequently referred to with n. Within a pattern use the backreference \n; outside of the pattern use MatchData[n].

'at' is captured by the first group of parentheses, then referred to later with \1:

/[csh](..) [csh]\1 in/.match("The cat sat in the hat")
    #=> #<MatchData "cat sat in" 1:"at">

Regexp#match returns a MatchData object which makes the captured text available with its [] method:

/[csh](..) [csh]\1 in/.match("The cat sat in the hat")[1] #=> 'at'

Capture groups can be referred to by name when defined with the (?<name>) or (?'name') constructs.

/\$(?<dollars>\d+)\.(?<cents>\d+)/.match("$3.67")
    #=> #<MatchData "$3.67" dollars:"3" cents:"67">
/\$(?<dollars>\d+)\.(?<cents>\d+)/.match("$3.67")[:dollars] #=> "3"

Named groups can be backreferenced with \k<name>, where name is the group name.

/(?<vowel>[aeiou]).\k<vowel>.\k<vowel>/.match('ototomy')
    #=> #<MatchData "ototo" vowel:"o">

Note: A regexp can't use named backreferences and numbered backreferences simultaneously.

When named capture groups are used with a literal regexp on the left-hand side of an expression and the =~ operator, the captured text is also assigned to local variables with corresponding names.

/\$(?<dollars>\d+)\.(?<cents>\d+)/ =~ "$3.67" #=> 0
dollars #=> "3"

Grouping¶ ↑

Parentheses also group the terms they enclose, allowing them to be quantified as one atomic whole.

The pattern below matches a vowel followed by 2 word characters:

/[aeiou]\w{2}/.match("Caenorhabditis elegans") #=> #<MatchData "aen">

Whereas the following pattern matches a vowel followed by a word character, twice, i.e. [aeiou]\w[aeiou]\w: 'enor'.

/([aeiou]\w){2}/.match("Caenorhabditis elegans")
    #=> #<MatchData "enor" 1:"or">

The (?:…) construct provides grouping without capturing. That is, it combines the terms it contains into an atomic whole without creating a backreference. This benefits performance at the slight expense of readability.

The first group of parentheses captures 'n' and the second 'ti'. The second group is referred to later with the backreference \2:

/I(n)ves(ti)ga\2ons/.match("Investigations")
    #=> #<MatchData "Investigations" 1:"n" 2:"ti">

The first group of parentheses is now made non-capturing with '?:', so it still matches 'n', but doesn't create the backreference. Thus, the backreference \1 now refers to 'ti'.

/I(?:n)ves(ti)ga\1ons/.match("Investigations")
    #=> #<MatchData "Investigations" 1:"ti">

Atomic Grouping¶ ↑

Grouping can be made atomic with (?>pat). This causes the subexpression pat to be matched independently of the rest of the expression such that what it matches becomes fixed for the remainder of the match, unless the entire subexpression must be abandoned and subsequently revisited. In this way pat is treated as a non-divisible whole. Atomic grouping is typically used to optimise patterns so as to prevent the regular expression engine from backtracking needlessly.

The " in the pattern below matches the first character of the string, then .* matches Quote“. This causes the overall match to fail, so the text matched by .* is backtracked by one position, which leaves the final character of the string available to match "

/".*"/.match('"Quote"')     #=> #<MatchData "\"Quote\"">

If .* is grouped atomically, it refuses to backtrack Quote“, even though this means that the overall match fails

/"(?>.*)"/.match('"Quote"') #=> nil

Subexpression Calls¶ ↑

The \g<name> syntax matches the previous subexpression named name, which can be a group name or number, again. This differs from backreferences in that it re-executes the group rather than simply trying to re-match the same text.

This pattern matches a ( character and assigns it to the paren group, tries to call that the paren sub-expression again but fails, then matches a literal ):

/\A(?<paren>\(\g<paren>*\))*\z/ =~ '()'

/\A(?<paren>\(\g<paren>*\))*\z/ =~ '(())' #=> 0
# ^1
#      ^2
#           ^3
#                 ^4
#      ^5
#           ^6
#                      ^7
#                       ^8
#                       ^9
#                           ^10

Matches at the beginning of the string, i.e. before the first character.
Enters a named capture group called paren
Matches a literal (, the first character in the string
Calls the paren group again, i.e. recurses back to the second step
Re-enters the paren group
Matches a literal (, the second character in the string
Try to call paren a third time, but fail because doing so would prevent an overall successful match
Match a literal ), the third character in the string. Marks the end of the second recursive call
Match a literal ), the fourth character in the string
Match the end of the string

Alternation¶ ↑

The vertical bar metacharacter (|) combines two expressions into a single one that matches either of the expressions. Each expression is an alternative.

/\w(and|or)\w/.match("Feliformia") #=> #<MatchData "form" 1:"or">
/\w(and|or)\w/.match("furandi")    #=> #<MatchData "randi" 1:"and">
/\w(and|or)\w/.match("dissemblance") #=> nil

Character Properties¶ ↑

The \p{} construct matches characters with the named property, much like POSIX bracket classes.

/\p{Alnum}/ - Alphabetic and numeric character
/\p{Alpha}/ - Alphabetic character
/\p{Blank}/ - Space or tab
/\p{Cntrl}/ - Control character

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Regexp

`=~` and `Regexp#match`¶ ↑

`=~` operator¶ ↑

`Regexp#match` method¶ ↑

Metacharacters and Escapes¶ ↑

Character Classes¶ ↑

Repetition¶ ↑

Capturing¶ ↑

Grouping¶ ↑

Atomic Grouping¶ ↑

Subexpression Calls¶ ↑

Alternation¶ ↑

Character Properties¶ ↑

Home Classes Methods

In Files

Parent

Methods

Files

Class/Module Index

Regexp

=~ and Regexp#match¶ ↑

=~ operator¶ ↑

Regexp#match method¶ ↑

Metacharacters and Escapes¶ ↑

Character Classes¶ ↑

Repetition¶ ↑

Capturing¶ ↑

Grouping¶ ↑

Atomic Grouping¶ ↑

Subexpression Calls¶ ↑

Alternation¶ ↑

Character Properties¶ ↑

`=~` and `Regexp#match`¶ ↑

`=~` operator¶ ↑

`Regexp#match` method¶ ↑