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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

There are two types of people in the world: those who have no idea what a regular expression is, and those who not only know what they are but can compose them on the fly and tend to use them in ...

In the Star Wars universe, not everyone uses a lightsaber, and those who do wield them had to build them themselves. There’s something to be said about that strategy. Building a car or a radio is a ...

Microsoft Excel has recently introduced three powerful new functions that leverage regular expressions (REGEX) to enhance text manipulation capabilities. These functions simplify tasks that were ...

Regular expressions come in handy for all varieties of text processing, but are often misunderstood--even by veteran developers. Here's a look at intermediate-level regular expressions and what they ...

If you’ve programmed in Perl or any other language with built-in regular-expression capabilities, then you probably know how much easier regular expressions make text processing and pattern matching.

I usually defend Excel come hell or high water. However, when it comes to regular expressions (regexes), even I admit that open-source LibreOffice Calc is superior: it treats them as native search ...