Help with Regular Expressions

Regular expressions are a very powerful tool in any programmers toolset.

Unfortunately I have always had a difficult time creating and testing them.

Recently a co-worker told me about a tool he has been using the Expresso Regular Expression Development Tool.

This is a fantastic tool to aid the developer in creating, testing and saving regular expressions.

Published Tuesday, January 13, 2009 12:49 PM by dmccollough

Tuesday, January 13, 2009 3:34 PM by Brad C.

I have tried out Espresso, but it was not until I started using RegexBuddy that I started using Regular Expressions more often.

I did have some troubles with running RegexBuddy in Vista, but it appears as though the recent upgrade has fixed the problem.

Espresso's price is better, but I think the 30.00 or so I spent on RegexBuddy is pretty good.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009 6:57 PM by SGWellens

It's also nice in that it adds documenation to the code it generates:

/// <summary>

/// A description of the regular expression:

///

/// [Zip]: A named capture group. [\d{5}]

/// Any digit, exactly 5 repetitions

/// -

/// [Sub]: A named capture group. [\d{4}]

/// Any digit, exactly 4 repetitions

///

/// </summary>

public static Regex regex = new Regex(

"(?<Zip>\\d{5})-(?<Sub>\\d{4})",

RegexOptions.IgnoreCase

| RegexOptions.CultureInvariant

| RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace

| RegexOptions.Compiled

);

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 3:23 AM by alexandershapovalov

Have a look at Komodo regular expression, I used it while learned it. It's very good, but also costs money.

David McCollough