The biggest problem I have with regular expressions is all the differences in syntax between java, ruby, grep etc. I find that I could use them about every othe

The biggest problem I have with regular expressions is all the differences in syntax between java, ruby, grep etc. I find that I could use them about every other week but I have to go and google for how to use them in each environment. It isn't just the difference between how to say "match digits" but in java you use a few lines of oo code whereas in ruby there is an operator ~= to match or replace. Then oracle started to support them in one of the more recent releases. So that is yet another syntax/api to learn. I find I can remember how to do the basic searches but for anything more advanced I have to spend a while debugging it.