RegEx

ruby-talk
1

Hi all, I have such a question. Is it really important to know very well
regular expressions, if I am not going to be a web designer? What about a
web developer? Is it true that regex is most usable with strings matching.
I know that it will take much time to cover this topic so what do you say?
To learn or not to learn? Is it really needed? What is the main field of
RegEx workability? Thank you!

···

-------------------------------------

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2

Getting back to the original question:

Is it really important to know very well regular expressions,
if I am not going to be a web designer?
What about a web developer?

Regular expressions are a vast and beautiful subject. However for
someone starting out in the field, I would consider them lower
priority. You should first get a couple of programming languages under
your belt, some basic SQL, a framework or 2, and in the process you're
bound to pick up some regex.

I've been a professional web application developer for about 5 years
now, and though I do use regular expressions frequently, my basic
knowledge of them does not limit me from getting my work done. There
are always multiple solutions to a problem and though regex are fast,
succinct and elegant, they are never the only solution. Plus the web
will provide you with 80% of the regex you will ever need.

There is also the flip side argument that regular expressions, once
written, can be impossible to decipher and modify. It is very, very
hard to debug code that relies extensively on regular expression.

Regardless, regular expressions are a fantastic tool, just not hugely
important for someone starting out as a programmer. I would not put
your other learning on hold while you read a regex book.

···

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 7:22 AM, <sata@mail.bg> wrote:

Hi all, I have such a question. Is it really important to know very well
regular expressions, if I am not going to be a web designer? What about a
web developer? Is it true that regex is most usable with strings matching. I
know that it will take much time to cover this topic so what do you say? To
learn or not to learn? Is it really needed? What is the main field of RegEx
workability? Thank you!

-------------------------------------
Празнична промоция на хостинг! Неограничен трафик и много екстри с 57%
отстъпка!

3

Regular expressions are an amazing and powerful tool that any programmer
should master no matter their domain.

Yes, learn them.

4

sata,

I personally recommend the book "Mastering Regular Expressions":

It is a dense book and will probably need to be read more than once, but it
is worth it.

You can always read the documentation on Ruby's Regexp class as well:

···

-----
Carlos Agarie
Software Engineer
+55 11 97320-3878 | @carlos_agarie

2014-11-18 11:08 GMT-02:00 <sata@mail.bg>:

Thank you Xavier! Do you have any source suggestion? I have some in mind
but do you share your opinion or it does't matter what source I'll start
out to read. Is it well compatible with ruby?

----- Цитат от Xavier Noria (fxn@hashref.com), на 18.11.2014 в 14:32 -----

Regular expressions are an amazing and powerful tool that any programmer
should master no matter their domain.

Yes, learn them.

-------------------------------------
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5

Thank you Xavier! Do you have any source suggestion? I have some in mind
but do you share your opinion or it does't matter what source I'll start
out to read. Is it well compatible with ruby?

----- Цитат от Xavier Noria (fxn@hashref.com), на 18.11.2014 в
14:32 ----- Regular expressions are an amazing and powerful tool that any
programmer should master no matter their domain.
Yes, learn them.

···

-------------------------------------
Mail.BG: Безплатен e-mail адрес. Най-добрите характеристики на българския пазар - 20 GB пощенска кутия, 1 GB прикрепен файл, безплатен POP3, мобилна версия, SMS известяване и други. http://mail.bg

6

The book Carlos recommends is one of the best technical books I've read.

That's the bible though, you could start with the documentation of Regexp,
also mentionged by Carlos, or read the tutorial in the official Perl
documentation

    http://perldoc.perl.org/perlretut.html

The syntax differences are not important, and the regexps themselves are
incompatible only in advanced stuff you do not need to care now.

7

Thanks to all you for answers. It was great help, especially on you Bruka.
Maybe I should start to learn them later. However they are very exciting
tool and maybe I'll read meanwhile.

----- Цитат от bruka (bruka@idatainc.com), на 18.11.2014 в 16:03
----- Getting back to the original question:

Is it really important to know very well regular expressions,
if I am not going to be a web designer?
What about a web developer?

Regular expressions are a vast and beautiful subject. However for
someone starting out in the field, I would consider them lower
priority. You should first get a couple of programming languages under
your belt, some basic SQL, a framework or 2, and in the process you're
bound to pick up some regex.

I've been a professional web application developer for about 5 years
now, and though I do use regular expressions frequently, my basic
knowledge of them does not limit me from getting my work done. There
are always multiple solutions to a problem and though regex are fast,
succinct and elegant, they are never the only solution. Plus the web
will provide you with 80% of the regex you will ever need.

There is also the flip side argument that regular expressions, once
written, can be impossible to decipher and modify. It is very, very
hard to debug code that relies extensively on regular expression.

Regardless, regular expressions are a fantastic tool, just not hugely
important for someone starting out as a programmer. I would not put
your other learning on hold while you read a regex book.

···

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 7:22 AM, wrote:
Hi all, I have such a question. Is it really important to know very well
regular expressions, if I am not going to be a web designer? What about a
web developer? Is it true that regex is most usable with strings matching.
I
know that it will take much time to cover this topic so what do you say?
To
learn or not to learn? Is it really needed? What is the main field of
RegEx
workability? Thank you!

-------------------------------------
Празнична промоция на хостинг!
Неограничен трафик и много екстри с 57%
отстъпка!

-------------------------------------

СуперХостинг.БГ стават на 9! Вземи хостинг с неограничен трафик с 57% отстъпка!
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8

You should also check out http://rubular.com/ once you have covered the basics. It’s an interactive way to play around with regular expressions.

Eigil

···

—
Sent from Mailbox

On tirsdag, nov. 18, 2014 at 5:08 a.m., sata@mail.bg <sata@mail.bg>, wrote:
Thank you Xavier! Do you have any source suggestion? I have some in mind but do you share your opinion or it does't matter what source I'll start out to read. Is it well compatible with ruby?

----- Цитат от Xavier Noria (fxn@hashref.com), на 18.11.2014 в 14:32 -----

Regular expressions are an amazing and powerful tool that any programmer should master no matter their domain.

Yes, learn them.

-------------------------------------
Mail.BG: Безплатен e-mail адрес. Най-добрите характеристики на българския пазар - 20 GB пощенска кутия, 1 GB прикрепен файл, безплатен POP3, мобилна версия, SMS известяване и други.

9

There is also http://weitz.de/regex-coach/ (runs also on Linux under
Wine). It is not exactly Ruby regex but it is an amazing tool to watch
the matching process and debug expressions.

Cheers

robert

···

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 2:15 PM, Eigil Sagafos <eigil@sagafos.no> wrote:

You should also check out http://rubular.com/ once you have covered the
basics. It’s an interactive way to play around with regular expressions.

--
[guy, jim].each {|him| remember.him do |as, often| as.you_can - without end}
http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/

10

This might become a flame war, and certainly opens up a lot of possibilities
for discussion, but I would never discard regulard expressions as lower
priority.

RegExpes are not hard to learn, especially if you cover the basics. Mastering
them, of course, is an entirely different topic, but that doesn't mean that
you should learn them later. Parsing strings is much more common work than one
might think, and being proficient with the basics of regular expressions
really helps a lot. At least, its better than to use all the other awkward
string function just to get pieces extracted from a string.

Once you've covered the basics of regular expressions, you'll never need any
other string search/concat/edit function. Plus, regexpes work nearly
everywhere.

Just my two cents.
      --- Eric

···

On Tuesday 18 November 2014 14:23:58, Boris Atanasov <sata@mail.bg> wrote:

Thanks to all you for answers. It was great help, especially on you Bruka.
Maybe I should start to learn them later. However they are very exciting
tool and maybe I'll read meanwhile.

----- Цитат от bruka (bruka@idatainc.com), на 18.11.2014 в 16:03
----- Getting back to the original question:

Is it really important to know very well regular expressions,
if I am not going to be a web designer?
What about a web developer?

Regular expressions are a vast and beautiful subject. However for
someone starting out in the field, I would consider them lower
priority. You should first get a couple of programming languages under
your belt, some basic SQL, a framework or 2, and in the process you're
bound to pick up some regex.

11

Thanks Robert for sharing this. :slight_smile:

···

On Tuesday, November 18, 2014 02:17:52 PM Robert Klemme wrote:

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 2:15 PM, Eigil Sagafos <eigil@sagafos.no> wrote:
> You should also check out http://rubular.com/ once you have covered the
> basics. It’s an interactive way to play around with regular expressions.

There is also The Regex Coach - interactive regular expressions (runs also on Linux under
Wine). It is not exactly Ruby regex but it is an amazing tool to watch
the matching process and debug expressions.

Cheers

robert

--

Regards,
Arup Rakshit

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore,
if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not
smart enough to debug it.

--Brian Kernighan