Searching Wikipedia with regular expressions (regex)
Searching with regex online
To search Wikipedia live with regular expressions, use the insource: parameter, followed by your regex search string enclosed in forward slashes, like this: /regular expression/. Here is an example:
insource:/(Abraham|Abe) Lincoln/
insource searches the wikitext version of articles, and so, wikiformatting codes can be included in the search string. If any characters you wish to find are used as special characters within regex, they will need to be "escaped" by preceding each with a backslash. For a cheat sheet on writing regexes, see Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Regular expression.
For case insensitive searches, include an "i" after the closing forward slash.
Searching with regex offline
To search all of Wikipedia offline using regex, you need to download the Wikipedia database and do the search offline with AutoWikiBrowser's Database Scanner. Activate it from the tools menu in AutoWikiBrowser (AWB). It returns the names of the pages that match your query, which you can have sent directly to AWB's list maker (then you can use AWB to view them all). The Database Scanner has many features, and each query can be easily configured to match, exclude, specify namespaces, ignore redirects, etc. as you see fit.
Other methods of searching Wikipedia with regular expressions
To add this auto-updating template to your user page, use {{tip of the day}}
Barnstars
You have earned this 1956 Hungarian Revolution Barnstar
István (talk) 05:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
The Understanding Barnstar
Dear Elen of the Roads, thank you very much for your kindness and your understanding! It really helped me to endure the block. --Mbz1 (talk) 15:38, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
The Original Barnstar
For bringing sense and sanity to WP:ANI,and hitting the nail right right on the head. Dlohcierekim 20:33, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
The Copyright Cleanup Barnstar
For your invaluable contributions to evaluating and addressing copyright concerns in this CCI. Moonriddengirl(talk) 17:36, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
The Guidance Barnstar
He's a difficult case with great upside potential. Your mentoring is appreciated. Mike Cline (talk) 00:42, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
With appreciation to your thoughtful and sensitive navigation of the ship in the Monty Hall case. Mathematicians (of which I used to be one) aren't easy to communicate with, and mathematicians going mathematical and losing everyone else (as well as each other) was one of the key problems here. I think the pushback on some of your original proposals was sound, but regardless I deeply appreciated the combination of pragmatism, challenging questions where you perceived a real issue, and adaptability in the discussion on the proposed decision page, to get around the sticky points in #11 and reach a solution that works for (nearly) everyone. Martinp (talk) 07:33, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
The Admin's Barnstar
For the wise closure of a very long discussion on a difficult user (which shall remain unnamed here). FuFoFuEd (talk) 09:43, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
For dealing with User:J3mm0 in the decisive fashion you did. Sometimes the line between nasty but sane, and just pure crazy is very bright... Cerejota (talk) 07:44, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
The Admin's Barnstar
Thanks for such a quick response in solving the problematic vandal IP I reported earlier today!
Your work is greatly appreciated by Wikipedia editors. Charles Dayton(Talk) 18:53, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
The Understanding Barnstar
To a woman of character:
"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving."
Thank you very much for your kindness and your understanding and simply being here on Wikipedia.