Learning Regular Expressions

Learn to use one of the most powerful programming tools available Experts at regular expression have long been armed with an incredibly powerful tool, one that can be used to perform all sorts of powerful text processing and manipulation in just about every language and on every platform. That's the good news. The bad news is that for too long, regular expressions have been the exclusive property of only the most tech savvy. Until now. Learning Regular Expressions will teach you the regular expressions that you really need to know, starting with simple text matches and working up to more complex topics, including the use of back references, conditional evaluation, and look-ahead processing. You'll learn what you can use, and you'll learn it methodically, systematically, and simply by using clear and practical examples and solving real problems. Regular expressions are nowhere near as complex as they appear to be at first glance. All it takes is a clear understanding of the problem being solved and how to leverage regular expressions so as to solve them. Read and understand regular expressions Use literal text and meta-characters to build powerful search patterns Take advantage of advanced regular expression features including look-ahead and backr eferences Perform powerful search and replace operations in all major professional editing tools Add sophisticated form and text processing to web applications Search for files using command-line tools like grep and egrep Use regular expressions in programming languages like JavaScript, Java, PHP, Python, Microsoft .NET, C#, and ColdFusion Work with phone numbers, postal codes, social security numbers, IP addresses, URLs, email addresses, and credit card numbers