November 2003 - Posts

• 2 tools, 2 errors?

  I was playing around with 2 of my favourite regex tools tonight trying to write something useful related to backtracking and Atomic Grouping (or possesive quantifiers for my non-existant Java friends) so I set up the following trivial, contrived example: Read More... Posted Friday, November 28, 2003 8:42 PM by digory | 2 Comments Filed under: Tools and Sites, Samples

• Death by Abstraction

  In my known universe everything sits on a plane - and there are many planes. Some planes are close together and some are far apart; some are thick and some are thin; some are wide and long while others are short and narrow; others still intersect. Most Read More... Posted Wednesday, November 26, 2003 8:19 PM by digory | 0 Comments Filed under: NYN

• Still playing around with the Regex Coach

  I think that I'm hooked :-) I ran the tool over some patterns on RegexLib.com last night and got some surprising results. It's so interesting to see the effects of backtracking. To see what I mean, run the tool in step-through mode on a dirt-simple example Read More... Posted Wednesday, November 26, 2003 5:38 AM by digory | 0 Comments Filed under: Tools and Sites

• Regex Coach

  I started to use the RegexCoach tonight to get a better look at how the engine works with regular expressions. Some really unique things about this tool are: Parse Tree View : apparently it gives you a regex engine view of things :-) Step Through Mode Read More... Posted Tuesday, November 25, 2003 9:56 PM by digory | 0 Comments Filed under: Tools and Sites

• Understanding

  I started reading Atlas Shrugged yesterday and, while coming in on the bus this morning I read an interesting paragraph describing Henry Reardon feelings as he struggles to understand why those around him treat him the way they do: “... almost as Read More... Posted Tuesday, November 25, 2003 7:47 AM by digory | 0 Comments Filed under: Books

• Why regexp's are dominant

  Four months ago I realized that I had become completely stale from too much programming and that I needed another interest to help my mind to travel some different paths. I thought about it for a while and, decided that I would either learn Japanese or Read More... Posted Tuesday, November 25, 2003 5:31 AM by digory | 0 Comments

• How Regexes Work

  After some prodding from Mark I was reminded of a link which has sat, unread, in my Favourites folder for about a year now: How Regexes Work It is an article which purports to describe how to create your own regular expression parser and, along the way Read More... Posted Monday, November 24, 2003 7:37 AM by digory | 0 Comments Filed under: Tools and Sites

• Named Groups

  My 4 favourite features of Regular Expressions are: Named Groups Match Evaluators IgnorePatternWhitespace (allows commented regex's) Static Methods (for simplicity) Named Groups are good for a couple of reasons; firstly they make it clear what each part Read More... Posted Sunday, November 23, 2003 8:42 PM by digory | 2 Comments Filed under: Samples

• Semiotic Suicide

  Regular Expressions are extremely useful and can be used for a wide array of purposes when dealing with text; specifically matching or replacing text. As many people are aware, you can use regex to define a "pattern" and then, use the various methods Read More... Posted Saturday, November 22, 2003 5:27 PM by digory | 1 Comments Filed under: Samples

• More about Regex Blogs

  [ cross-posted on http://weblogs.asp.net/DNeimke ] Senkwe Chand left the following comment on my last entry and I thought that I'd answer it here to clear any confusion that might exist: Hi Darren, I guess I should really direct this to ScottW, but, in Read More... Posted Friday, November 21, 2003 3:20 PM by digory | 0 Comments Filed under: Blogs

• My hopes for Regex blogs

  [ cross-posted on http://weblogs.asp.net/DNeimke ] If this entry has landed in your email/aggregator/browser and you'd like a home to express your regex thoughts regularly, please contact me via my contact form and I can set you up. Likewise, if you know Read More... Posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 12:31 PM by digory | 1 Comments Filed under: Blogs

• \G - Match at end of previous match

  The .NET Framework's flavour of regex is very rich and offers amazing power users and, while I can take advantage of most of the features today such as: MatchEvaluators RightToLeft matching semantics Named Groups Simple syntax via static methods ... there's Read More... Posted Thursday, November 20, 2003 7:34 AM by digory | 0 Comments Filed under: Samples

• Greedy Roy

  I'd just like to mention that Roy Osherove has regex blog. Roy and I have worked together quite a bit of late as we've been combining our energies to link our regular expression tools. For the record Roy created Regulator and I maintain RegexLib.com . Read More... Posted Wednesday, November 12, 2003 8:10 AM by digory | 1 Comments Filed under: Blogs

• Tool : Microsoft.NET® Visual Regular Expression Evaluator

  While rejoicing in the breadth of the internet (randomly following links), I came across this interesting little regex tool: http://www.electrified.net/dev/RegexEvaluate.aspx I like the visual nature of the tool and the way that metadata surrounding the Read More... Posted Tuesday, November 11, 2003 5:18 AM by digory | 1 Comments Filed under: Tools and Sites

• Regulator and RegexLib webservices

  Roy has released his latest version of Regulator: http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/posts/35946.aspx I've been using that tool for the past week or so and I can say that it's very impressive. This is like a full IDE for pattern authoring and gives you Read More... Posted Tuesday, November 11, 2003 5:13 AM by digory | 0 Comments Filed under: Tools and Sites, RegexLib

• Obligatory first impression

  I started a new job last week so I haven't had much time to play with, or write about regular expressions since then; the big new is that RegexBlogs.com is now live :-) I'm hoping that this site will grow and that I'll be able to attract many new blog'gers Read More... Posted Monday, November 10, 2003 8:24 PM by digory | 0 Comments