Why is regex complicated?
Regular expressions are dense. This makes them hard to read, but not in proportion to the information they carry. Certainly 100 characters of regular expression syntax is harder to read than 100 consecutive characters of ordinary prose or 100 characters of C code.
What does this regex do?
Short for regular expression, a regex is a string of text that allows you to create patterns that help match, locate, and manage text. Perl is a great example of a programming language that utilizes regular expressions.
What can a regular expression be used for?
A regular expression can be a single character, or a more complicated pattern. Regular expressions can be used to perform all types of text search and text replace operations. /w3schools/i is a regular expression.
How to use regex in a programming language?
Regular Expressions (Regex) 1 Regex By Examples This section is meant for those who need to refresh their memory. 2 Regular Expression (Regex) Syntax A Regular Expression (or Regex) is a pattern (or filter) that describes a set of strings that matches the pattern. 3 Regex in Programming Languages
Why are regular expressions so controversial in programming?
Modern patterns have almost nothing in common with the primitive things you were taught in your finite automata class. Regexes are a great tool, but people think “Hey, what a great tool, I will use it to do X!” where X is something that a different tool is better for (usually a parser).
What happens if you don’t know regular expression?
However, if your job has anything to do with parsing text (roughly any web-application out there…) and you don’t know regular expression, you suck at your job and you’re wasting your own time and that of your employer. There are excellent resources out there to teach you everything about them that you’ll ever need to know, and more.