Pattern-matching functions

Pattern-matching functions are used to match strings against regular expressions.

Pattern matching operator

Cypher supports regular expression with =~ operator. The =~ operator succeeds only if its pattern matches the entire string.

Example:

RETURN 'abc' =~ 'abc';
True

RETURN 'abc' =~ 'a';
False

RETURN 'abc' =~ '.*(b|d).*';
True

RETURN 'abc' =~ '(b|c).*';
False

Escaping in regular expressions

To use special characters (e.g. ., *) without special meaning, escape them with backslash (\).

Example:

RETURN '[email protected]' =~ '.*\\.com';
True

Case-insensitive regular expressions

To use case-insensitive regular expressions, preappend a regular expression with ?i

Example:

RETURN 'abc' =~ '(?i)A.*';
True

Regex functions

You can also use regex functions within Cypher to match, extract or replace substrings.

Note

Scroll the table to the right to see example usage.

Function	Description	Example	Result
regexp_matches(string, regex)	returns true if a part of string matches the regex	regexp_matches('aba', '^ab')	true
regexp_replace(string, regex, replacement)	replaces the first occurrence of regex with the replacement	regexp_replace('ababbb', 'b.b', 'a')	'aabb'
regexp_extract(string, regex[, group = 0])	split the string along the regex and extract first occurrence of group	regexp_extract('abababab', 'b.b', 0)	'bab'
regexp_extract_all(string, regex[, group = 0])	split the string along the regex and extract all occurrences of group	regexp_extract_all('abababab', 'b.b', 0)	['bab','bab']