Aregular expression (regex) is a sequence of characters defining a search pattern. On the wiki, they are commonly used for finding and replacing text throughSpecial:ReplaceText (staff only),AutoWikiBrowser,Pywikibot, or Scribunto/Lua modules.

Each tool/programming language uses its own ruleset for regular expressions:

• Special:ReplaceText supports a small subset (( ) . * + ? [ ]) of the PHP and MySQL/PostgreSQL regular-expression set.
• AutoWikiBrowser uses.NET regular expressions.
• Pywikibot usesPython regular expressions.
• Lua/Scribunto pattern are similar to regular expressions, but not identical. Seethis page for a list of differences.

If you need help with regular expressions, you may post onthe talk page, or join the NookipediaDiscord and ask in the #wiki-tech channel.

Testing[edit]

There are several online tools to test our patterns. A small selection is listed below.

• regex101.com
• regexr.com
• extendsclass.com
• softwium.com

Examples[edit]

Below is a list of examples of regular expressions that may help you on the wiki. Feel free to expand this list.

• Replacing instances of{{I|Item Name}} with{{I|Item Name|New Horizons}} (Python):

Find:{{I\|(?!.*\|)(.*?)}}

Replace:{{I|\1|New Horizons}}

• Matching a multi-line Foreignname template and adding a new "See also" section after it (Python):

Find:{{Foreignname([\s\S]*?\n}})

Replace:{{Foreignname\1\n\n==See also==

• Addf#-img parameters after eachfurn# parameter in instances of house templates; the template takes in the furniture name as a parameter and returns a filename (AWB):

Find:\|furn([1-9]\d?)= (.*)

Replace:|furn$1= $2\n|f$1-img= {{subst:Example|$2}}

• Prepend anhtml selector to every CSS property in a stylesheet (source on StackOverflow byRyan Worth):

Find:(^(?:\s|[^@{])*?|[},]\s*)(\/\/.*\s+|.*\/\*[^*]*\*\/\s*|@media.*{\s*|@font-face.*{\s*)*([.#]?-?[_a-zA-Z]+[_a-zA-Z0-9-]*)(?=[^}]*{)

Replace:$1$2html $3

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