Pi-hole regular expressions tutorial¶
We provide a short but thorough introduction to our regular expressions implementation. This may come in handy if you are designing blocking or whitelisting rules (see also our cheat sheet below!). In our implementation, all characters match themselves except for the following special characters: .[{}()\*+?|^$. If you want to match those, you need to escape them like \. for a literal period, but no rule without exception (see character groups below for further details).
Anchors (^ and $)¶
First of all, we look at anchors that can be used to indicate the start or the end of a domain, respectively. If you don't specify anchors, the match may be partial (see examples below).
| Example | Interpretation |
|---|---|
domain |
partial match. Without anchors, a text may appear anywhere in the domain. This matches some.domain.com, domain.com and verylongdomain.com and more |
^localhost$ |
exact match matching only localhost but neither a.localhost nor localhost.com |
^abc |
matches any domain starting (^) in "abc" like abcdomain.com, abc.domain.com but not def.abc.com |
com$ |
matches any domain ending ($) in "com" such as domain.com but not domain.com.co.uk |
Wildcard (.)¶
An unescaped period stands for any single character.
| Example | Interpretation |
|---|---|
^domain.$ |
matches domaina, domainb, domainc, but not domain |
Bounds and multipliers ({}, *, +, and ?)¶
With bounds, one can denote the number of times something has to occur:
| Bound | Meaning |
|---|---|
ab{4} |
matches a domain that contains a single a followed by four b (matching only abbbb) |
ab{4,} |
matches a domain that contains a single a followed by at least four b (matching also abbbbbbbb) |
ab{3,5} |
matches a domain that contains a single a followed by three to five b (matching only abbb, abbbb, and abbbbb) |
Multipliers are shortcuts for some of the bounds that are needed most often:
| Multipliers | Bounds equivalent | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
? |
{0,1} |
never or once (optional) |
* |
{0,} |
never or more (optional) |
+ |
{1,} |
once or more (mandatory) |
To illustrate the usefulness of multipliers (and bounds), we provide a few examples:
| Example | Interpretation |
|---|---|
^r-*movie |
matches a domain like r------movie.com where the number of dashes can be arbitrary (also none) |
^r-?movie |
matches only the domains rmovie.com and r-movie.com but not those with more than one dash |
^r-+movie |
matches only the domains with at least one dash, i.e., not rmovie.com |
^a?b+ |
matches domains like abbbb.com (zero or one a at the beginning followed by one or more b) |
Character groups ([])¶
With character groups, a set of characters can be matched:
| Character group | Interpretation |
|---|---|
[abc] |
matches a, b, or c (using explicitly specified characters) |
[a-c] |
matches a, b, or c (using a range) |
[a-c]+ |
matches any non-zero number of a, b, c |
[a-z] |
matches any single lowercase letter |
[a-zA-Z] |
matches any single letter |
[a-z0-9] |
matches any single lowercase letter or any single digit |
[^a-z] |
Negation matching any single character except lowercase letters |
abc[0-9]+ |
matches the string abc followed by a number of arbitrary length |
Bracket expressions are an exception to the character escape rule. Inside them, all special characters, including the backslash (\), lose their special powers, i.e. they match themselves exactly. Furthermore, to include a literal ] in the list, make it the first character (like []] or [^]] if negated). To include a literal -, make it the first or last character, or the second endpoint of a range (e.g. [a-z-] to match a to z and -).
Groups (())¶
Using groups, we can enclose regular expressions, they are most powerful when combined with bounds or multipliers (see also alternations below).
| Example | Interpretation |
|---|---|
(abc) |
matches abc (trivial example) |
(abc)* |
matches zero or more copies of abc like abcabc but not abcdefabc |
(abc){1,3} |
matches one, two or three copies of abc: abc, abcabc, abcabcabc but nothing else |
Alternations (|)¶
Alternations can be used as an "or" operator in regular expressions.
| Example | Interpretation |
|---|---|
(abc)|(def) |
matches abc and def |
domain(a|b)\.com |
matches domaina.com and domainb.com but not domain.com or domainx.com |
domain(a|b)*\.com |
matches domain.com, domainaaaa.com domainbbb.com but not domainab.com (any number of a or b in between domain and .com) |
Character classes ([:class:])¶
In addition to character groups, there are also some special character classes available, such as
| Character class | Group equivalent | Pi-hole specific | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|---|
[:digit:] |
[0-9] |
No | matches digits |
[:lower:] |
[a-z] |
No | matched lowercase letters(FTL matches case-insensitive by default) |
[:upper:] |
[A-Z] |
No | matched uppercase letters(FTL matches case-insensitive by default) |
[:alpha:] |
[A-Za-z] |
No | matches alphabetic characters |
[:alnum:] |
[A-Za-z0-9] |
No | matches alphabetic characters and digits |
[:blank:] |
[ \t] |
Yes | blank characters |
[:cntrl:] |
N/A | Yes | control characters |
[:graph:] |
N/A | Yes | all printable characters except space |
[:print:] |
N/A | Yes | printable characters including space |
[:punct:] |
N/A | Yes | printable characters not space or alphanumeric |
[:space:] |
[ \f\n\r\t\v] |
Yes | white-space characters |
[:xdigit:] |
[0-9a-fA-F] |
Yes | hexadecimal digits |
Advanced examples¶
After going through our quick tutorial, we provide some more advanced examples so you can test your knowledge.
Block domain with only numbers¶
^[0-9][^a-z]+\.((com)|(edu))$
Blocks domains containing only numbers (no letters) and ending in .com or .edu. This blocks 555661.com, and 456.edu, but not 555g555.com
Block domains without subdomains¶
^[a-z0-9]+([\-]{1}[a-z0-9]+)*\.[a-z]{2,7}$
A domain name shall not start or end with a dash but can contain any number of them. It must be followed by a TLD (we assume a valid TLD length of two to seven characters)
Cheatsheet¶
| Expression | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
^ |
Beginning of string | ^client matches strings that begin with client, such as client.server.com but not more.client.server.com (exception: within a character range ([]) ^ means negation) |
$ |
End of string | ing$ matches exciting but not ingenious |
* |
Match zero or more of the previous | ah* matches ahhhhh or a |
? |
Match zero or one of the previous | ah? matches a or ah |
+ |
Match one or more of the previous | ah+ matches ah or ahhh but not a |
. |
Wildcard character, matches any character | do.* matches do, dog, door, dot, etc.;do.+ matches dog, door, dot, etc. but not do (wildcard with + requires at least one extra character for matching) |
( ) |
Group | Enclose regular expressions, see the example for | |
| |
Alternation | (mon|tues)day matches monday or tuesday but not friday or mondiag |
[ ] |
Matches a range of characters | [cbf]ar matches car, bar, or far; |
[^] |
Negation | [^0-9] matches any character except 0 to 9 |
{ } |
Matches a specified number of occurrences of the previous | [0-9]{3} matches any three-digit number like 315 but not 31;[0-9]{2,4} matches two- to four-digit numbers like 12, 123, and 1234 but not 1 or 12345;[0-9]{2,} matches any number with two or more digits like 1234567, 123456789, but not 1 |
\ |
Used to escape a special character not inside [] |
google\.com matches google.com |