Overview

A number of apps provide advanced features that require the use of regular expressions for pattern matching. Generally, just a simple understanding of regular expressions and a few examples are enough to get by for most use cases. This will just give page has a few simple examples to get started. Use the references for more advanced information. We recommend using testing your regular expressions in one of the well-known regex test sites (we do all the time!!!) - RegexPlanet or testing sites such as RegexPlanet or Regex101.

Info

title	Regex for workflow conditions

For Jira workflow functions using regex expressions to condition whether the post function should continue processing, a blank pattern means that condition processing is not done and processing should continue.

Tip

title	Key tips

Dot or period (.) is a special regex character. If you really want to match on it, you need to escape it with a backslash: \.
Don't be confused with generic pattern matching used for file systems for instance. On a file system, *.png means all files ending with .png. That is an illegal regex expression. For regex you need: .*\.png. Or to simplify: .*png which will find all files ending in png (not necessarily ending in an extension of png).
Regex is case sensitive by default. In most cases, use the case insensitive flag: (?i). See one of the examples below.
Dotall mode when you need to match across line breaks.

In dotall mode, the expression . matches any character, including a line terminator. By default this expression does not match line terminators. Dotall mode can also be enabled via the embedded flag expression (?s). (The s is a mnemonic for "single-line" mode, which is what this is called in Perl.)

Simple

...

examples

Table plus

autoNumber	true

Value	Regex	Demonstrates
ABC	A.C	. matches any single character
ABC	A.*	* indicates 0 or more characters
ABC	.*C
A.B	A\.B	Escape special regex characters with backslash if necessary
ABC	AB*	Regex is NOT generic matching
ABC	A.+	+ indicates 1 or more
ABC	ABC.+
ABC	ABC.*
ABCD	ABC.*
ABC	[ABCD]	[ ] indicates a class of characters
ABC	[ABZ]
ABC8	[A-Z0-9]	- indicates a range of characters
ABC	[AB^C]	^ in a class means NOT the following character
ABC	DEF\|ABC	\| indicates OR
image.png	.png\|.jpg
image.jpg	.png\|.jpg
image.JPG	.png\|.jpg	defaults to case sensitive matching
image.JPG	(?i).png\|.jpg	(?i) indicates case insensitive matching
ABAB	(AB)+	() indicates a grouping
ABCD	(AB)+
112233	\d+	\d for digits
A B	A\s*B	\s for whitespace
ABC	\S*	\S for non whitespace
	\S+	Value must have at least 1 non whitespace character
A	\S+
XYZ,ABC,UVW	.\bABC\b.	Word boundaries. Finding words in a comma or blank separated list using word boundaries
XYZ,ABCD,UVW	.\bABC\b.
ABC	(?m)(^ABC$)\|(^ABC,)\|(,ABC,)\|(,ABC$)	Looking for text matches in a comma separated list by covering all cases: only, start, middle, and end. This uses the multi-line flag: (?m).
XYZ,ABC,UVW	(?m)(^ABC$)\|(^ABC,)\|(,ABC,)\|(,ABC$)
XYZ,ABC DEF,UVW	(?m)(^ABC$)\|(^ABC,)\|(,ABC,)\|(,ABC$)

Advanced

...

examples

Value	Regex	Demonstrates
example.txt txt	`^((?!\.png).)*$`	Find string not containing a word. In this example, files that do not have a .png extension
example.png png	`^((?!\.png).)*$`	Find string not containing a word. In this example, files that do not have a .png extension
example.jpeg	`(?=^((?!\.png).)$)(?=^((?!\.jpeg).)$)`	Find string not containing a word. In this example, files that do not have a .png or .jpeg extension
collateral wholesale retail	`.(?=.\bretail\b.)(?=.\bcollateral\b.).`	Match exact words anywhere in string. In this case a blank separated list of labels and we require both collateral and retail to be included before we want the match to be successful
wholesale retail	`.(?=.\bretail\b.)(?=.\bcollateral\b.).`	Both are required for a match
merger acquisition	`.\b(?:merger\|acquisition)\b.`	Match string containing either word

Filter by label (Content by label)

showLabels	false
excerpt	true
title	Content with regex label
excerptType	simple
cql	label = "regex"
labels	regex

References

RegexOne - interactive tutorials to learn how to construct regular expressions
Regexlib.com - searchable collection of user-contributed regular expressions
RegexPlanet test site - test your expressions quickly
Regex101 test site - understand a regex expression and test it
Wikipedia regular expressions
Regular expression reference
Quick reference - best once you have the concepts
Using word boundaries
Regular expression to match string not containing a word?

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examples

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