STEP 1: DESCRIBE WHAT YOU WANT TO MATCH

Tell the AI exactly what pattern you’re looking for. Be specific about the format.

Examples: – “Match US phone numbers in format (123) 456-7890” – “Extract all email addresses from text” – “Find dates in MM/DD/YYYY format” – “Match ZIP codes (5 digits or 5 digits + 4)”

STEP 2: ASK AI TO WRITE THE REGEX

Use this prompt template: “Write a regex pattern to [your description]. Show me the pattern and explain what it does.” Example full prompt: “Write a regex pattern to match US phone numbers in these formats: – (123) 456-7890 – 123-456-7890 – 123.456.7890 Show me the pattern and explain what it does.”

STEP 3: TEST AND USE THE PATTERN

The AI will give you:

1. The regex pattern

2. An explanation of how it works

3. Often, example code in your language

Example response: “Pattern: ^\(?\d{3}\)?[-.\s]?\d{3}[-.\s]?\d{4}$ Explanation: – ^ = start of string – \(? = optional opening parenthesis – \d{3} = exactly 3 digits – \)? = optional closing parenthesis – [-.\s]? = optional separator (dash, dot, or space) – \d{3} = exactly 3 digits – [-.\s]? = optional separator – \d{4} = exactly 4 digits – $ = end of string

COMMON USE CASES

1. Email validation “Write regex to validate email addresses”

2. Extract URLs from text “Write regex to extract all URLs from a paragraph”

3. Password requirements “Write regex for password with: 8+ characters, 1 uppercase, 1 number, 1 special character”

4. Credit card format “Write regex to match credit card numbers (groups of 4 digits)”

5. Extract hashtags “Write regex to find all hashtags in social media text”

TIPS

– Describe edge cases (“should match X but not Y”)

– Ask AI to test the pattern with example strings

– If the regex doesn’t work, paste your test strings and ask AI to fix it

– Request code examples in your specific programming language

WHEN TO USE THIS

– Form validation (emails, phone numbers, ZIP codes)

– Data cleaning (extracting specific patterns from messy text)

– Log file parsing

– Web scraping

– Text processing scripts.