Jeffrey E. FriedlMastering Regular Expressions, Second Edition

I bought this book on a whim, mainly because I try to buy (and read... ugh!) a hard-core technical book every month or so, but mainly because my UNIX scripting abilities have become rusty with disuse. I used to be able to write a tight, 10-line csh script to mangledit thousands of files at a single time. Now I hack away at files manually with vi. The other day, I even forgot how to search & replace. My kung fu isn't nearly what it used to be.It usually takes me about a month to slog through a new book (especially academic texts, which are great but make you want to have a stiff martini before each new chapter) but I tore through Friedl's book in a few days. It's an outstanding reference for understanding & learning to use regular expressions.Regexes can be cryptic to say the least, but Friedl offers many examples, broken down into step-by-step instructions and explanations of how each regex works (in many cases, right down to the individual character level). He covers a variety of platforms and languages - the hardcore Perl enthusiast will enjoy this book greatly, but he offers fairly equal time to alternative languages like Java and the "grep" family.All that said, this book is an outstanding technical reference, pure and simple, for two reasons:- Friedl uses an interesting new typesetting convention to illustrate which sections of text are regular expressions, and which sections are not. It's hard to describe (and impossible to reproduce here) but they look like 90-degree braces at the upper-left and lower-right corners. This is a FANTASTIC approach and I for one would love to see this extended to other technical books.- Speaking of other things I would love to see extended to other technical books, THIS BOOK HAS ALMOST NO ERRORS! This is even more impressive considering the fact that, with regular expressions, screwing up EVEN A SINGLE CHARACTER is significant. Nothing [upsets]memore than spending $50-100 perfectly good dollars on a sloppy, error-laden, grammatically-challenged, poorly-edited, ill-reviewed and badly-structured book (which pretty much describes 90% of all the technical books out there). He made a few mistakes, the vast majority of which are extremely trivial in nature, and all of which were quickly posted to his website as errata. If only the other 90% of the technical authors out there were even half as diligent.All told, this book belongs on your bookshelf.

One of the hardest things, even for a seasoned programmer to grasp is regular expressions. They are powerful ways to search, manipulate and parse text fields and can often take several lines of code and shrink it down to a mystic, but powerful, expression.If you have ever had to parse a file for information, you know that one of the things that still haunts any programmer nowadays is how to match text. In this day and age of Object Oriented Programming, Web Services, etc. the power of Regex holds firm.Throughout this book the author takes great care not to overwhelm the reader with tons of code that has no meaning. The power of the book comes from the fact that if you read, and follow along, through the examples you will gain an understanding of how to do the techniques the author is referring to. At times it may seem like you have to read over a section twice, but you will realize that as you carry forth into the next section the material you read previously has turned into something you can now apply -- not just another example you can cut and paste and never really learn technique behind.This is a powerful book, covering many, many pages. Noone should expect to sit down and read it cover to cover and be done with it. The benefit comes from reading, applying, and referencing. I find myself using it several times a week to lookup information on Regular Expressions and to held solidify knowledge of techniques that I have used in the past.Whether you are a Windows, Unix, or even Macintosh person -- RegEx holds the key to text manipulation -- and this book holds the map you need to find that key.

In spite of the vow that Friedl would not put himself (and his family) through the rigors of writing a followup to his first edition, I sure am glad he made the decision to write a second edition. Over 5 years ago, I got the first such book and found it to be a humbling experience -- realizing just how little I *really* knew about regular expressions (in spite of thinking my skills were quite advanced in that area).Now, years later and as an instructor of UNIX at North Lake College in Irving, Texas, I highly recommend this book to even our first year students. Friedl's clear explanation of this topic and the manner in which he presents the material makes it comprehensible to even those that have never had experience with regex's before. Like Perl's Larry Wall, Jeffrey Friedl has a strong background in natural languages. That contributes not only to bhis lucid writing style but also helps in terms of understanding regex's as a "little language".This 2nd edition is particularly welcome because of its extensive coverage of regular expressions in the context of Java. That ons aspect alone is sufficient to get the updated second edition (to say nothing of the enhancements in Perl since the first edition of the book).

How come a technology that is as old as computers themselves is still around? Regular expressions solve one of the most basic problems in computer science: parsing strings.There is no doubt that regular expressions are beasts. This will will demystify them. By understanding them, you will be less scared of using them. This book does just that. However, the level of this book is high and the level of details amazing. It is not a cook book so it would be wise to also read another book that gives you more examples. This particular book is like the bible of regex. It needs to be in your library.

I really liked this book. It’s an older edition, but even then it was just what I expected. It went beyond the beginner level of reflexes and gave me a taste of the inner workings. I’m not ready to dive into automotan theory but this book peaked my curiosity in it. I wish it used a nicer syntax language like Python for the examples.

Un excellent ouvrage pour comprendre, en profondeur, les expressions régulières. Une grande partie des exemples sont donnés dans le langage Perl mais des chapitres entiers concernent d'autres langages comme par exemple Java.Une très bonne lecture ....

If you regularly develop code in Perl, PHP, Javascript, Java or any other language supporting Regular Expressions, this book will be invaluable to you. Regular Expressions might not look too wonderful, they don't look very friendly, but once you learn them, you'll wonder how you *ever* did without them. This book explains regular expressions comprehensively and simply, and covers specific differences between RE implementations in various languages.You really can't go wrong here - buying this book and investing a little time to learn Regular Expressions can double your efficiency as a coder - they save me countless hours in my job as a web developer for a major ISP, I couldn't live without Regular Expressions, and I couldn't live without this book!

正規表現の内部処理や、挙動をとても分かりやすい口調で教えてくれます。この手の本は普通、”そうなるもんだ”という押し付けが多いのですが、この本は読み手に本当の理解をしてもらいたいという意図を感じ取れます。本格的に本当のスキルとして正規表現を使ってゆきたいというひとにはお勧めです

This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It goes far behind simply using regExps but into efficiency and alternate strategies. Covers implementation in many languages (java, perl, .net) yet is still quite easy to understand.The author says the aim of the book is to get you to "think in regular expressions", this is a great approach and I now find myself using regular expressions to do just about everything involving text.Well recommended if you really want to understand and use regular expressions