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I read Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey Friedl 20 years ago when I was in middle school, front to back, and it's probably been the best investment of re

I read Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey Friedl 20 years ago when I was in middle school, front to back, and it's probably been the best investment of reading time I've ever made.

floxy 2y ago
Yes, I also highly recommend that as well; you won't go wrong with "Mastering Regular Expressions".
proactivesvcs 2y ago
Importantly, this teaches the reader when not to use regex, when to craft them carefully, pitfalls and misconceptions.
orochimaaru 2y ago
I’ve had decent success with using chatgpt to provide regex based on examples and a description of what I need. That being said - regex is a superpower.
RhysU 2y ago
When I need a gift for someone starting a CS degree I give a copy of Mastering Regular Expressions.
gregjor 2y ago
+1 excellent book
jeff-hykin 2y ago
What prompted you to read it?
- murderfs 2y ago
  If I remember correctly, the local public library was selling books off for ultra cheap for some reason, and I added it to the pile of books my parents bought to fill the empty built-in bookshelves in our new family home (along with a bunch of reader's digest anthologies). I scanned through the first part of it and it seemed super powerful (I was just getting into programming at the time), so it captivated me.
fuzztester 2y ago
I had read on some tech site, some years ago, that Friedl worked at Yahoo for a while, and IIRC in a role involving a lot of text munging, which would probably have involved a lot of regular expression usage, maybe across the many web properties they had in that period, which included Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Finance, and many more. Found that interesting. I had bought his book around that time or sometime later, but never read it fully, partly because I used to go cross-eyed from reading the text with all the italics and other highlighting (of the regexes in action) in a small font, which was probably needed to explain regex concepts, but still ... but after reading this thread, I feel motivated to dive into regex again, at least at the shallow end of the pool, although I have dabbled in it and used it now and then in my work, before now.
- fuzztester 2y ago
  I mean, the highlighting was maybe useful, but having it in the small font made it unnecessarily difficult to read. squiggly italics of say, one or two characters in length, are harder to distinguish from non-italic characters, when in quite a small font.
hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
Same, but just the first 3 chapters. The rest I'll get to if I ever have to write a regex parser myself.

I read Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey Friedl 20 years ago when I was in middle school, front to back, and it's probably been the best investment of reading time I've ever made.

floxy 2y ago

Yes, I also highly recommend that as well; you won't go wrong with "Mastering Regular Expressions".

proactivesvcs 2y ago

Importantly, this teaches the reader when not to use regex, when to craft them carefully, pitfalls and misconceptions.

orochimaaru 2y ago

I’ve had decent success with using chatgpt to provide regex based on examples and a description of what I need. That being said - regex is a superpower.

RhysU 2y ago

When I need a gift for someone starting a CS degree I give a copy of Mastering Regular Expressions.

gregjor 2y ago

+1 excellent book

jeff-hykin 2y ago

What prompted you to read it?

murderfs 2y ago
If I remember correctly, the local public library was selling books off for ultra cheap for some reason, and I added it to the pile of books my parents bought to fill the empty built-in bookshelves in our new family home (along with a bunch of reader's digest anthologies). I scanned through the first part of it and it seemed super powerful (I was just getting into programming at the time), so it captivated me.

fuzztester 2y ago

I had read on some tech site, some years ago, that Friedl worked at Yahoo for a while, and IIRC in a role involving a lot of text munging, which would probably have involved a lot of regular expression usage, maybe across the many web properties they had in that period, which included Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Finance, and many more. Found that interesting. I had bought his book around that time or sometime later, but never read it fully, partly because I used to go cross-eyed from reading the text with all the italics and other highlighting (of the regexes in action) in a small font, which was probably needed to explain regex concepts, but still ... but after reading this thread, I feel motivated to dive into regex again, at least at the shallow end of the pool, although I have dabbled in it and used it now and then in my work, before now.

fuzztester 2y ago
I mean, the highlighting was maybe useful, but having it in the small font made it unnecessarily difficult to read. squiggly italics of say, one or two characters in length, are harder to distinguish from non-italic characters, when in quite a small font.

hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago

Same, but just the first 3 chapters. The rest I'll get to if I ever have to write a regex parser myself.