How to Use Regex — Beginner's Guide 2026

Regex looks like alien language but it's actually simple once you learn the basics.

What Is Regex?

Regular expressions (regex) are patterns that match text. Think of them as super-powered search.

Essential Patterns

• . — Any single character
• * — Zero or more of previous
• + — One or more of previous
• ? — Zero or one of previous
• \d — Any digit (0-9)
• \w — Any word character (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _)
• \s — Any whitespace
• [abc] — Any of a, b, or c
• ^ — Start of string
• $ — End of string

Common Examples

• Email: [\w.-]+@[\w.-]+\.\w+
• Phone: \d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4}
• URL: https?://[\w.-]+

Practice

Test your patterns on spunk.codes/regex-tester — live matching with highlights.