# Ansible Inventory - Groups by Regular Expression?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-inventory-groups-by-regular-expression/20650>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [February 22, 2016, 11:48pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-inventory-groups-by-regular-expression/20650 "2016-02-22T23:48:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tomb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c37758/32.png) [@Tomb](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Tomb)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 11:48pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-inventory-groups-by-regular-expression/20650/1 "2016-02-22T23:48:50Z")

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Is it possible to use regular expressions to create groups within an inventory file? Such as the below:

> hosts

`

SRX110-1-GB  
SRX110-2-GB  
SRX110-5-GB  
SRX550-1-GB  
SRX110-1-US  
SRX240-1-US  
SRX240-2-GB

[MODEL-SRX110]  
~^SRX110.\*

[MODEL-SRX240]  
~^SRX240.\*

[MODEL-SRX550]  
~^SRX550.\*

[COUNTRY-GB]  
~._-GB$  
[COUNTRY-US]  
~._-US$

`

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Brian\_Coca](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@Brian\_Coca](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Brian_Coca)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2016, 8:13pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-inventory-groups-by-regular-expression/20650/2 "2016-02-23T20:13:05Z")

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no, but the patterns do work in host expressions (hosts: ~._-GB$ , --limit '~_-US$')