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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 page has a few simple examples to get started. Use the references for more advanced information. We recommend testing your regular expressions in one of the well-known regex testing sites such as RegexPlanet or Regex101.
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.
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
Value | Regex | Matches | 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 | Matches | Find | Demonstrates |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| example.txt |
|  |  | Find string not containing a word. In this example, files that do not have a .png extension |
| example.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 |
Content with regex label
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How to implement regex pattern for attachments that exclude either of two labels using Advanced Tables for Confluence (One Appfire Support Knowledge Base)
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How to condition the creation of issues (One Appfire Support Knowledge Base)
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How to condition issue creation (One Appfire Support Knowledge Base)
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How to add condition to a blank or empty field (One Appfire Support Knowledge Base)
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Use regex to remove Include macro from space(s) using Confluence CLI (One Appfire Support Knowledge Base)
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How to remove specific word(s) on a page using the Confluence CLI findReplaceRegex parameter (One Appfire Support Knowledge Base)
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How to add regular expression check validator for IP address and host name (One Appfire Support Knowledge Base)
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How to validate input values in the text field that are separated by comma with regular expression (One Appfire Support Knowledge Base)
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How to assign issue automatically based on Email Keywords (One Appfire Support Knowledge Base)
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Define condition based issue creation (Create on Transition for Jira)
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Add condition to a blank or an empty field (Create on Transition for Jira)
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Define condition based issue creation - Cloud (Create on Transition for Jira)
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matchStart (Power Scripts for Jira Cloud) — Returns the position where the match starts or -1 if it doesn't match.
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matchReplace (Power Scripts for Jira Cloud) — Uses a regex expression to find and replace text within a string.
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matchEnd (Power Scripts for Jira Cloud) — Returns the position where the match ends or -1 if it doesn't match.
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?