Some say a set of regular expressions comprises a domain-specific language, or DSL; essentially, a mini-programming language. A full-blown programming language like Java or Python can do many things, ...

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 ...

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 ...

Recently Microsoft has introduced a game-changing set of functions in it’s Excel spreadsheet software that harness the power of Regular Expressions (REGEX) to streamline data extraction, cleaning, and ...

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 ...

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 ...

This article explains what regex (or regular expressions) is and how to get started using it with web crawlers, plus some interesting real-world use cases. One technology skill that is too-often ...

I was involved in a recent discussion on the "best" way to remove a given parameter from a URL string. The conversation began with using string primitives to split and join the parameter, a method ...