I hope nobody laughs at this too hard, but I'm prepared if they do; fire away I need to learn regular expressions. Actually I need to master them. I can see how one needs this skill to get anywhere in programming and other areas. I figure if I can teach myself to get an Amateur Extra class ham radio license and teach myself automotive technology from the ground up (been in the biz 30+ years), I ought to be able to teach myself this. What I'm looking for is learning resource(s) starting at the PRIMER level on regular expressions. Ideally, I'd like to use free online materials, but I'd be willing to spring some dough for an online course and/or decent books on the subject. I'm not getting very good results searching online so far and I thought some of you folks could point me in the right direction. Please keep in mind that even though I know a little bit about regular expressions, I want to start at the "kindergarten" level so to speak. I know this is old hat to most of you, but it's fairly new stuff for me. Thanks much in advance and go ahead, call me a noob and such. I've been called worse things ;-)
Regular expression is fairly hard to understand and master unless you are versed in programming with CGI/Perl where it is used heavily in. If you have some books of Perl you may get some good documentation on Regular Expressions. Otherwise try looking at this link. http://www.troubleshooters.com/codecorn/littperl/perlreg.htm
I wouldn't be so sure of that. I've been doing this for a long time and I don't know any programmer or developer who says, "Oh boy! A chance to use regular expressions! Whoopee!" It's a pain for most people, and most people just learn enough to do what they need to do.
This is true, Regular Expressions are extremely powerful but I do find myself having to re-learn them every time. This is a good resource> http://www.regular-expressions.info/ Oh and when you want to cheat www.regexlib.com ian
Hank is absolutely correct -- been developing & managing developers for ... well let's just say that the personal computer didn't exist back then... and I still avoid them whenever possible. A very helpful (and free) tool called Expresso from http://www.ultrapico.com/ ... allows you to test and analyze regex statements. Great for learning -- or just making sure you don't muck 'em up. David
