Keep only what your regex matches
Drop the surrounding text and keep only the substrings your pattern hits, one per line. Perfect for pulling emails, URLs, IDs out of a wall of text.
alice@example.com bob@test.org carol@demo.io
How to keep only what matches
Drop in a pattern and sample text — only the substrings the regex hits are kept, one per line.
- 01
Type a pattern
The pattern decides what survives. Everything else is dropped.
Patterns compile through the JavaScript RegExp constructor, so syntax errors surface immediately and engine quirks like Unicode property escapes (\p{L}) work when the u flag is on.
patternECMAScriptliteralliveinput · literalpattern · regex\b\w+@\w+\.\w+\bloaded · ECMAScriptPCRE · ready - 02
Paste sample text
Drop in any chunk of text — emails, URLs, hashtags, IDs, whatever you want to isolate.
Each flag character mirrors the ECMAScript literal: g enables iteration, i folds case, m anchors per line, s lets . match newlines, u unlocks proper Unicode, y is sticky, and d emits indices.
flagsoptionsg · i · mliveconfig · optionstext · flagsReach alice@...flags applied · liveECMA · live - 03
Read each match
Every match appears on its own line in the output panel.
Watch for catastrophic backtracking on nested quantifiers — a common ReDoS source. The tool caps match counts to keep the page responsive on pathological patterns.
matchgroupshighlightReDoS-saferun · outputlist · matchesalice@example.commatches · livegroups · live - 04
Copy or export
Grab the output as JSON, CSV, or plain text — ready for your editor or pipeline.
Copy writes via navigator.clipboard.writeText; downloads use a Blob and object URL, so nothing transits the network and the output is byte-identical to what you see on screen.
copyexportclipboardblobexport · exportedready · savedCopiedready to shipsuccess
Regex patterns that don't melt down
Use named groups
(?<year>\d{4}) reads better than $1 and survives reordering. Supported in ECMAScript 2018+.
Anchor strictly
Use ^/$ with the m flag when matching whole lines. Without anchors, partial matches sneak through.
Avoid catastrophic backtracking
Nested quantifiers like (a+)+ can explode. Run patterns through ReDoS Detector first.
Escape every literal
Backslash any meta character you want literally: \.\$\^\*\+\?\(\)\[\]\{\}\|\\.
Test edge cases
Empty string, single character, unicode, the maximum length you expect — write fixtures for each.
Patterns aren’t parsers
Don’t parse HTML, JSON, or balanced parens with regex. Use a proper parser when the grammar is recursive.
When to keep only matches
Isolating signal from noise in any text.
Extract emails
Pull every address out of a wall of text. Compiles through the JavaScript RegExp constructor — engine quirks (Unicode property escapes, sticky matching, named groups) work when their flags are on. Error messages cite the exact position of any syntax issue.
ReDoS-safeHarvest URLs
Build a list of links from any document. Pairs with the ReDoS detector to catch catastrophic backtracking before you deploy. A pattern that handles 1k-character input fine can become a denial-of-service vector on attacker-controlled 1M-character input.
ECMA-compliantPull IDs
Isolate UUIDs, ticket numbers, SKUs. Output exports as JavaScript, Python re, Java util.regex, .NET System.Text.RegularExpressions, PCRE, and POSIX — language quirks are highlighted on conversion so you don't ship a JS-only pattern to a Go service.
spec-gradeMine hashtags
Grab every #tag from a feed dump. Capture groups (named or numbered) round-trip cleanly into replacement strings, JSON output, or CSV extraction without re-typing. Backreferences ($1, ${name}) preserve semantics across languages.
cross-engineStrip noise
Keep just the parts that matter to your script. Test against edge cases — empty input, single character, max length, multibyte boundaries — to catch off-by-one and zero-length match bugs before they reach production.
test-readyAudit content
Surface every mention of a name or term. All matching runs client-side so secret patterns never leave the browser. Useful when the pattern itself is sensitive (PII regexes, internal data formats, security filters).
production-readyFrequently asked questions
Something missing?
Tell us what you need. We ship the top requests every two weeks.