Regular expression to English

Question

Given a regular expression, is there a library or webservice which will give the human/non-programmer an English description?

For example, .+ => one or more characters

Consider to move to https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ – Michael Freidgeim Sep 13 '19 at 22:58 — Michael Freidgeim, Sep 13 '19 at 22:58

Tim Pietzcker · Answer 1 · 2015-04-17T15:06:18.327

77

There is an excellent site called http://regex101.com that does exactly that, as well. It also provides access to different regex engines, allows you to save and debug your regexes and test strings...very nice.

regex101 screenshot

edited Apr 17 '15 at 15:06

answered Mar 27 '13 at 21:42

Tim Pietzcker

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Perfect site. Loved the unit tests it has... – ViniciusPires Dec 02 '14 at 12:08
This site is good, but the explanation cannot be copied (to put in source, for example). – Daniel Lidström Sep 22 '22 at 08:55

score 22 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 25 '10 at 07:58

22

I don't know about a website, but RegexBuddy will do that for you.

alt text

answered Nov 25 '10 at 07:58

Tim Pietzcker

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is it only for purchase no free version is available ? – XMen Nov 25 '10 at 08:10
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That's correct, but it's *so* worth it. And I'm not affiliated with JGSoft in any way. – Tim Pietzcker Nov 25 '10 at 08:15
Surely doable for Free!! Even if advertising supported!! – Will Hancock Mar 27 '13 at 18:48
@WillHancock: You're right. I've added another answer. – Tim Pietzcker Mar 27 '13 at 21:43
This is the first software product I ever paid for. And I don't regret it. – Mawg says reinstate Monica Jul 16 '21 at 10:10
Expresso is free and it does the same. See https://ultrapico.com/expresso.htm – Daniel Lidström Sep 22 '22 at 08:56

score 10 · Answer 3 · answered May 26 '16 at 20:14

10

I'm a big fan of RegExr. Similar to regex101, but has more features and a nicer interface in my opinion.

answered May 26 '16 at 20:14

score 3 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 07 '15 at 05:51

This is an old question, but I was looking for something like this myself a few minutes ago, so here is the solution I found with a quick Google search.

http://www.myezapp.com/apps/dev/regexp/show.ws

The explanation is a little terse, but worked well enough for my needs. Here in a link to a screenshot (not enough reputation to post images). Screenshot of a simple regex example

I tried Tim Peitzcker's suggested regex101.com, but liked the simple format of this site better.

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 25 '10 at 08:02

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Regex Coach can do this, though it is a desktop app rather than something callable http://weitz.de/regex-coach/

answered Nov 25 '10 at 08:02

Paul Dixon

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Regular expression to English

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