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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
titleRegex for workflow conditions

For JIRA 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
titleKey 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

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examples


Table plus
autoNumbertrue


Value
Regex
Matches
Demonstrates
ABCA.C(tick). matches any single character
ABCA.*(tick)

* indicates 0 or more characters

ABC.*C(tick)
A.BA\.B(tick)Escape special regex characters with backslash if necessary
ABCAB*(error)

Regex is NOT generic matching (smile)

ABCA.+(tick)+ indicates 1 or more
ABCABC.+(error)
ABCABC.*(tick)
ABCDABC.*(tick)
ABC[ABCD]*(tick)[ ] indicates a class of characters
ABC[ABZ](error)
ABC8[A-Z0-9](tick)

- indicates a range of characters

ABC[AB^C](error)^ in a class means NOT the following character
ABCDEF|ABC(tick)| indicates OR
image.png.*png|.*jpg(tick)
image.jpg.*png|.*jpg(tick)
image.JPG.*png|.*jpg(error)defaults to case sensitive matching
image.JPG(?i).*png|.*jpg(tick)

(?i) indicates case insensitive matching

ABAB(AB)+(tick)() indicates a grouping
ABCD(AB)+(error)
112233\d+(tick)\d for digits
A BA\s*B(tick)\s for whitespace
ABC\S*(tick)\S for non whitespace

\S+(error)Value must have at least 1 non whitespace character
A\S+(tick)
XYZ,ABC,UVW.*\bABC\b.*(tick)Word boundaries. Finding words in a comma or blank separated list using word boundaries
XYZ,ABCD,UVW.*\bABC\b.*(error)
ABC(?m)(^ABC$)|(^ABC,)|(,ABC,)|(,ABC$)(tick)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$)|(^ABC,)|(,ABC,)|(,ABC$)(tick)
XYZ,ABC DEF,UVW(?m)(^ABC$)|(^ABC,)|(,ABC,)|(,ABC$)(error)


Advanced

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examples

Value
Regex
Matches
FindDemonstrates
example.txt txt

^((?!\.png).)*$

(error)(tick)Find string not containing a word. In this example, files that do not have a .png extension
example.png png

^((?!\.png).)*$

(error)(error)Find string not containing a word. In this example, files that do not have a .png extension
example.jpeg(?=^((?!\.png).)*$)(?=^((?!\.jpeg).)*$)(error)(error)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.*).*(tick)
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.*).*(error)
Both are required for a match
merger acquisition.*\b(?:merger|acquisition)\b.*(tick)
Match string containing either word

Filter by label (Content by label)
showLabelsfalse
excerpttrue
titleContent with regex label
excerptTypesimple
cqllabel = "regex"
labelsregex

References