How to Use Regex in BigQuery
Last updated July 26, 2026 · By the SaturnSQL team
REGEXP_CONTAINS tests whether a string matches a pattern, REGEXP_EXTRACT pulls out the first matching group, and REGEXP_REPLACE substitutes matches with new text.
SELECT REGEXP_CONTAINS(email, r'^[\w.+-]+@[\w-]+\.[a-z]{2,}$') AS is_valid_email
FROM users;Extracting a capture group
SELECT url, REGEXP_EXTRACT(url, r'/blog/([a-z0-9-]+)') AS slug
FROM events;Replacing matches
SELECT REGEXP_REPLACE(phone, r'[^0-9]', '') AS digits_only
FROM users;Use a raw string literal (prefixed with r) for regex patterns so backslashes do not need double escaping.
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