How to master Regular Expressions? [closed]

Answer 1

Besides those already mentioned, you can try the Regex Coach. I've heard good things about it.

Answer 2

Now we've given lots of pointers for learning more about regular expressions, it's probably worth quoting Jamie Zawinski:

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.

Part of learning about regular expressions is learning when not to use them (and when they're appropriate).

Answer 3

As Joe90 mentions, reading about them takes you a long way ;)

Personally I find http://www.regular-expressions.info/ a great resource for regex.

Answer 4

If you are working in .NET I recommend this site to visualize your results as well as see how to set up your code.

Answer 5

As simon pointed out. The most important part in mastering Regex is when NOT to use regex but that skill will come eventually. Till then use regex when you're doing Word finds or in your fave texteditor or in Excel. Anywhere that gives you that option, take it till you get a good handle on it.

Also, learn about these concepts fairly early on.

• greedy
• lazy
• what the difference between "." and "\w"
• "\b"
• the short-hand character classes ("\s", "\d", etc)

Answer 6

http://www.gskinner.com/RegExr/

is something i found after looking through some other sites