Learning Regular Expressions (Video Tutorial and Cheatsheet)
April 10th, 2007
Many people think that learning to use Regular Expressions is difficult, but if you stick to the basics it is actually quite easy. This screencast and cheatsheet will give you a gentle introduction and allow you to gradually expand your knowledge into advanced usage.
Nothing can improve your ability to manipulate text as much as learning Regular Expressions, and it is not just in your editor. Just about any modern programming language support them, so you can greatly enhance your productivity and understanding of code by learning them.
The following screencast gives an introduction to the basics of regular expressions and shows how you can use them in your editor. The best way to learn is just playing around with them and watching the interactive feedback.
I have included a cheatsheet that you can use as a quick reference, and to expand your knowledge of Regular Expressions. I recommend that you print it out and gradually expand your comfort zone by trying out more and more features.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Very nice introduction/tutorial/refresher to Regular Expressions, also immensely useful outside of e. Thank you! (And thanks for the cheat sheet, I thought I knew quite a bit about RE already, but anchors and POSIX classes were new to me)
April 10th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Very nice screencast Alexander,
a very good introduction to regular expressions and you also managed to show some features of e
. (imho the live highlighting is extremely useful and one of the best features e has to offer)
April 10th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Fantastic! I decided to tackle regex’s this year and it’s really been worthwhile.
April 11th, 2007 at 12:20 am
Cool
Nice HOW-to !
Will try to use this in my Apps
April 11th, 2007 at 4:06 am
Nice screencast and thanks for the cheat sheet!
I’ve been using this application for years, it’s quite handy:
http://weitz.de/regex-coach/
April 11th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Very good, thanks.
April 11th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Does anyone know which application is used in the tutorial?
April 11th, 2007 at 9:42 am
It is the text editor “e”, a pretty cool new text editor which allows you to use the TextMate bundles on windows. This blog is written by the developer of e.
You can download the editor here:
http://e-texteditor.com/download/e_beta_setup.exe
April 11th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Thanks Ronaldo and sorry
I just got the link to the tutorial and I did not care about the site.
So it was a really interesting question from me right on this site
April 11th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Thank u so much!
April 11th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
V4g3; It isn’t readily apparent that the author of this blog is also the author of “e”. Though seriously e is quickly becoming my favorite editor. It’s even unseated the Godly Vim. I absolutely /adore/ the way that it handles RegExps. It’s fantastic to see your RegExp automatically highlighted and to know exactly how it’s matching.
April 11th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Thanks! Great introduction.
April 11th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
I loved it. well spent 15 odd minutes.
Thanks!
April 11th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Thanks. Great intro.
April 13th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Great tutorial, and it was especially easy doing it in e, eh? ^_~
April 15th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
Thanks for the cheatsheet; it will come in handy. Is there a chance that you could make it available in a printer friendly color scheme? The black backgrounds will eat up a lot of ink.
May 10th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Great video, very easy to follow. Cheers.
May 13th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Bravo! Great Tutorial. Screencasts will be the future for tutorials on the web. Very good job!
Lefteris
May 17th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
is this app still actively being worked on? I think there is huge potential, especially as an actionscript editor. Keep it up!
June 21st, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Great intro. got through regex with difficulty but never thought its simplicity tips.