Regular Expressions- Match Anything

Question

How do I make an expression to match absolutely anything  including whitespaces   Example  Regex    I bought       sheep  Matches  I bought sheep  I bought a sheep  I bought five sheep  I tried using       but that doesn t seem to be working

User · Answer

works great if there are no line breaks  If it has to match line breaks  here are some solutions      Solution Description         s  s  dot all flag  makes    wildcard character  match anything  including line breaks  Throw in an    asterisk   and it will match everything  Read more       s S     s  whitespace metacharacter  will match any whitespace character  space  tab  line break        and  S  opposite of  s  will match anything that is not a whitespace character     asterisk  will match all occurrences of the character set  Encapsulated by      Read more

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Normally the dot matches any character except newlines    So if    isn t working  set the  dot matches newlines  too  option  or use   s        If you re using JavaScript  which doesn t have a  dotall  option  try   s S    This means  match any number of characters that are either whitespace or non-whitespace  - effectively  match any string    Another option that only works for JavaScript  and is not recognized by any other regex flavor  is      which also matches any string  But   s S   seems to be more widely used  perhaps because it s more portable

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The 2018 specification provides the s flag  alias  dotAll   so that   will match any character  including linebreaks   x000D   x000D  const regExAll       s    notice the  s   let str     Everything     in  this             string                     will                         be     matched  Including whitespace  even Linebreaks       console log  Match    regExAll test str      true console log  Index Location    str search regExAll     let newStr   str replace regExAll      console log  Replaced with   newStr     Index  0 x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Answer

Because   Find a single character  except newline or line terminator   So  to match anything  You can use like this      n     Hope it helps

User · Answer

Choose  amp  memorize 1 of the following          s S     w W     d D     Explanation    s  whitespace  S  not whitespace   w  word  W  not word   d  digit  D  not digit   You can exchange the   for   if you want 1 or MORE characters  instead of 0 or more       BONUS EDIT   If you want to match everything on a single line  you can use this      n     Explanation      not   n  linebreak     for 1 character or more

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lt  php  str    I bought   sheep   preg match   I bought       sheep    str   match   print r  match     gt    http   sandbox phpcode eu g b2243 php

User · Answer

does not work for me  I am trying to match comments surrounded by        which may contain multiple lines   Try this     a    a     This regex matches a or anything else expect a  Absolutely  it means matching everything   BTW  in my situation       a    a     matches C style comments   Thank  mpen for a more concise way     s S

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Use     and make sure you are using your implementations  equivalent of single-line so you will match on line endings   There is a great explanation here -  http   www regular-expressions info dot html

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Regex   I bought  sheep    Matches - the whole string till the end of line I bought sheep  I bought a sheep  I bought five sheep   Regex   I bought    sheep    Matches - the whole string and also capture the sub string within    for further use I bought sheep  I bought a sheep  I bought five sheep  I boughtsheep  I bought a sheep  I bought fivesheep  Example using Javascript Regex  I bought sheep  I bought a sheep  I bought five sheep   match  I bought    sheep    0    Output   quot I bought sheep  I bought a sheep  I bought five sheep  quot   I bought sheep  I bought a sheep  I bought five sheep   match  I bought    sheep    1    Output   quot  sheep  I bought a sheep  I bought five  quot

User · Answer

For JavaScript the best and simplest answer would seem to be        As suggested by others         would work as well but       is simpler  The    inside the pattern are not needed  as far as I can see nor the ending   to match absolutely anything  including empty strings   NON-SOLUTIONS      s S   does NOT match empty strings so it s not the solution      s S     DOES match also empty strings  But it has a problem  If you use it in your code then you can t comment out such code because the    is interpreted as end-of-comment        s S      works and does not have the comment-problem  But it is longer and more complicated to understand than

User · Answer

matches anything - I ve been using it for years

User · Answer

If you re using JavaScript  ES2018 added the  s  dotAll  flag  With the  s flag  the dot   will match any character  including a newline   x000D   x000D  console log  line 1 nline 2  match     s   x000D   x000D   x000D   Note  It s not supported by all browsers yet

User · Answer

Honestly alot of the answers are old so i found that if you simply just test any string regardless of character content with      i  will sufficiently get EVERYTHING

User · Answer

Try this   I bought       sheep   or even  I bought   sheep

User · Answer

I recommend use            g  Example  const text1    I am using regex         regex  g test text1     true  const text2    regex is awesome         regex  g test text2     true  const text3    regex is util         util      regex  g test text3     true  const text4    util is necessary         util      regex  g test text4     false because need regex in text   Use regex101  to test

Solution	Description
`/.*/s`	`/s` (dot all flag) makes `.` (wildcard character) match anything, including line breaks. Throw in an `*` (asterisk), and it will match everything. Read more.
`/[\s\S]*/`	`\s` (whitespace metacharacter) will match any whitespace character (space; tab; line break; ...), and `\S` (opposite of `\s`) will match anything that is not a whitespace character. `*` (asterisk) will match all occurrences of the character set (Encapsulated by `[]`). Read more.

[regex] Regular Expressions- Match Anything

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