Regex explainer
Paste your regular expression to get a plain-English explanation, broken down token by token: groups, quantifiers, character classes and anchors. No external library, everything is analyzed directly in your browser.
How it works
The tool walks through your pattern character by character, recognizing the structures specific to regular expressions (groups, bracketed classes, quantifiers, escapes) and attaching a plain-English explanation to each one, in the order they appear in the pattern.
Are flags taken into account in the explanation?
Flags (such as "g", "i", "m", "s") are mainly used to check that your expression is syntactically valid before analysis; the ^ and $ anchors explicitly mention their special behavior when the "m" (multiline) flag is active.
Does the tool also explain malformed regexes?
No: if the JavaScript engine cannot compile your expression (unclosed parenthesis, misplaced quantifier...), the tool shows the error message returned by the engine instead of a partial explanation that could be misleading.
Privacy: your regular expression is never sent to a server; the analysis runs entirely in JavaScript in your browser.