Demystify Regular Expressions

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Demystify Regular Expressions

by Derrick Story
Network Newsletter for 08/26/2003

Dear Reader,

Regular expressions are at the heart of every text-processing application. This mix of symbols and text can be used to facilitate efficient, and even creative, programming.

However, for many, writing regular expressions is considered somewhat of a black art, often involving lots of trial and error to achieve desired results. O'Reilly author, Tony Stubblebine, has published an article titled, "Five Habits for Successful Regular Expressions," where he explains how developers can eliminate lots of guesswork by following five basic rules for nearly any regex implementation.

If you like what you read, you should consider taking a look at Tony's new book, the "Regular Expression Pocket Reference." It's a comprehensive guide to regular expression APIs for C, Perl, PHP, Java, .NET, Python, vi, and the POSIX regular expression libraries.

This is your opportunity to take the mystery out of regular expressions.

Until next week,

-Derrick

Derrick Story
O'Reilly Network Managing Editor

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