match the same unknown character multiple times

Question

I have a regex problem I can\'t seem to solve. I actually don\'t know if regex can do this, but I need to match a range of characters n times at the end of a pattern. eg. bl

Answer 1

blahblah(.)\1*\b should work in nearly all language flavors. (.) captures one of anything, then \1* matches that (the first match) any number of times.