Mastering Regular Expressions
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Average rating5
15
Ratings2
Average rating5
Regular expressions are an extremely powerful tool for manipulating text and data. They are now standard features in a wide range of languages and popular tools, including Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, VB.NET and C# (and any language using the .NET Framework), PHP, and MySQL. If you don't use regular expressions yet, you will discover in this book a whole new world of mastery over your data. If you already use them, you'll appreciate this book's unprecedented detail and breadth of coverage. If you think you know all you need to know about regular expressions, this book is a stunning eye-opener. As this book shows, a command of regular expressions is an invaluable skill. Regular expressions allow you to code complex and subtle text processing that you never imagined could be automated. Regular expressions can save you time and aggravation. They can be used to craft elegant solutions to a wide range of problems. Once you've mastered regular expressions, they'll become an invaluable part of your toolkit. You will wonder how you ever got by without them. Yet despite their wide availability, flexibility, and unparalleled power, regular expressions are frequently underutilized. Yet what is power in the hands of an expert can be fraught with peril for the unwary. Mastering Regular Expressions will help you navigate the minefield to becoming an expert and help you optimize your use of regular expressions. Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition, now includes a full chapter devoted to PHP and its powerful and expressive suite of regular expression functions, in addition to enhanced PHP coverage in the central "core" chapters. Furthermore, this edition has been updated throughout to reflect advances in other languages, including expanded in-depth coverage of Sun's java.util.regex package, which has emerged as the standard Java regex implementation.Topics include: A comparison of features among different versions of many languages and tools, How the regular expression engine works, Optimization (major savings available here!), Matching just what you want, but not what you don't want, Sections and chapters on individual languages. Written in the lucid, entertaining tone that makes a complex, dry topic become crystal-clear to programmers, and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition offers a wealth information that you can put to immediate use. - Publisher.
Reviews with the most likes.
I read the first edition many years ago and while I don't remember the contents in detail, I get the impression that this edition has a much smoother opening than its predecessor, and is thus an easier book to read for less experienced programmers. The first few chapters teach the core techniques, with could recaps and summaries, as well as a lot of useful examples.
The second half of the book is much more advanced and focuses more on the technical aspects of regex engines, ways of maximizing efficiency in regular expressions and chapters on the implementation of regular expressions in various programming languages, including Perl, Java, and PHP.
It is really a classic work and a must for anyone who wants to learn how to think about regular expressions instead of just viewing a list of metacharacters found in a language documentation file.
