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Auto RegEx

Regular Expressions (RegEx) is a powerful tool that can help you find interesting words that match fairly complex patterns. However, writing RegEx can be difficult and time-consuming. This tool will attempt to generate a RegEx based on your description and kick off a Finder search to show results.

Describe in English the pattern you would like to generate:


This tool is only available to beta users.

Tips

  • You're looking for patterns. Think about the structure of the words or phrases you want to match.
  • Be specific, clear and concise in your description.
  • If you don't get useful results, try rewording your request.
  • If a request is too complicated, it will fail — keep it simple.

Examples

Try the links here to see the results:

Things that don't work

  • Words that start with an animal name (too many possibilities)
  • Words that are other words when reversed (RegEx can't do two passes)
  • Words about weather — that's not a pattern but see Finder Tips to see how OneLook search can help
  • Requests that are too complicated (it's sometimes hard to guess)
  • Words guaranteed to make Will Shortz love your crossword (unfortunately)

If people find this kind of thing interesting, I'll expand it in the future to enable even more sophisticated searches.

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