Regex Explainer

Paste any regex and get a token-by-token plain-English explanation: what each character class matches, what each group captures, what the quantifiers do, where the anchors are. Useful when reading regex you didn't write or debugging why a pattern doesn't match.

How to use the Regex Explainer

Paste your regex (without the slashes). The explainer walks the pattern from left to right, identifying each construct: character classes (\d, \w), groups, alternations, quantifiers, anchors, lookarounds, escapes. Each row is annotated with a plain-English description.

Why regex is hard to read

Regex is a write-only language for most developers. The pattern ^(?:[A-Z][a-z]+)(?:\s+(?:[A-Z][a-z]+))*$ takes a minute to figure out for anyone who didn't write it yesterday. The explainer reduces that to a glance — token, what it does, why.

This is most useful when: reading regex in a code review, debugging a regex pulled from a library, learning regex by example (start from the explanation and work backward to the pattern), or maintaining a regex written months ago.