Are regular expressions worth the hassle?

Question

It strikes me that regular expressions are not understood well by the majority of developers. It also strikes me that for a lot of problems where regular expressions are use

Answer 1

Due to the type of apps I build, the only RegEx's I regularly use are for email validation, html stripping, and character stripping to remove the garbage around phone numbers.

It's rare that I need to do very much string manipulation other than concatenation.

Incidentally, the apps are typically CRM's.

So the hassle for me is limited to googling for a regex in the event I find myself in need. ;)

Answer 2

Read the section under "Using Benchmarks" at JavaWorld.

Sure regular expressions are a very helpful tool, but I agree that they are overused and over complicate what can easily be a simple solution.

That being said, you should use regular expressions whenever the situation calls for it. Some things, such as searching for text in a string, can just as easily be done with an iterative search (or using the API searches), but for more complex situations you need regular expressions.

Answer 3

Whenever i use a Regex i always try to leave a comment explaining exactly how it's structured because I agree with you that not all developers understand them and going back to a regex, even if you've written it yourself, can be a headache to understand again.

That said, they definitely have their uses. Try stripping out all html elements from a box of text without it!

Answer 4

I just ran into this issue. I built a regular expression to pull out groups of data from a long string of numbers and some other noise. The regex was quite long, though concise, and it got even bigger when i tried to add it to the C# app i was writing. In total the reg ex was 3 lines of code.

However it was painful to look at after i escaped it for C# and the other developers i work with don't under stand regular expressions. I ended up stripping out most of the noise characters and splitting on space to get the groups of data. Very simple code and only 5 lines.

Which is better? My ego says Regular Expressions. Any new hire would say character stripping.

Answer 5

Maintaining one regular expression is a lot less effort than maintaining 20 lines of code. And you underestimate the amount of code needed - for a regex of any complexity, the replacement code could easily be 200 rather than 20 lines.

Answer 6

Professional developers should be familiar with basic syntax

At the very least. In all the years long I've been a professional developer I haven't come across a developer that wouldn't know what Regular Expressions are. It's true, not everybody likes using them or is very good at knowing its syntax, but that doesn't mean one shouldn't use them. Developers should learn the syntax and regular expressions should be used.

It's like: "Ok. We have Lambda expressions, but who cares, I can still do it the old fashioned way."

Not learning key aspects of professional development is pure laziness and shouldn't be tolerated for too long.