Java’s character and assorted string classes offer low-level support for pattern matching, but that support typically leads to complex code. For simpler and more efficient coding, Java offers the ...

The people who attended my presentations at RMOUG Training Days 2010 asked several good questions. One question that was asked in the Groovy presentation that I really wish I had included a slide on ...

The first time I ever encountered a regular expression was many years ago now, but I still remember my first thoughts on it: What is this string-like thing? I don’t want to touch it, it looks scary. I ...

Whether you are parsing logs or validating input, using regular expressions is a great way to accomplish both of these things. The problem is: regular expressions can be hard and that will only grow ...

Regular expressions have been part of the programmer’s toolkit for a long time, with their creation by Stephen Cole King in 1951. Their ability to match word patterns make them a powerful tool for ...

A long time ago, I wrote a utility for an employer that allowed testers to perform verification on data coming out of a hardware box using a regular expression language. It allowed users to evaluate ...

A quick run down on how you can use regular expressions in your own programs to give you more power over searching and substituting text. Perl has long been an extremely popular choice for text ...

You know the maxim, “Give a man to fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime”? A similar adage applies to anyone who spends a lot of time working with text on their ...

When I’m writing in Editorial, I often need to make sure I’m dealing with a valid URL in the system clipboard, the document editor, or in a variable. To do so, I’ve long employed John Gruber’s liberal ...