Regular Expression Pocket Reference

Larger Cover

By Tony Stubblebine

Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Released: August 2003

Pages: 112

Chapter 1 Regular Expression Pocket Reference
1. About This Book
2. Introduction to Regexes and Pattern Matching
3. Perl 5.8
4. Java (java.util.regex)
5. .NET and C#
6. Python
7. PCRE Lib
8. PHP
9. vi Editor
10. JavaScript
11. Shell Tools

Title:

Regular Expression Pocket Reference

By:

Tony Stubblebine

Publisher:

O'Reilly Media

Formats:

Print
Ebook
Safari Books Online

Print:

August 2003

Ebook:

June 2009

Pages:

112

Print ISBN:

978-0-596-00415-6

| ISBN 10:

0-596-00415-X

Ebook ISBN:

978-0-596-10378-1

| ISBN 10:

0-596-10378-6

Description

Table of Contents

Product Details

About the Author

Recommended for You

Recently Viewed

JavaScript Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition

By David Flanagan

October 2002

Ebook: $7.99

DNS & Bind Cookbook

By Cricket Liu

October 2002

Ebook: $35.99

Print & Ebook: $43.99

Print: $39.99

Java Swing, 2nd Edition

By Marc Loy, Robert Eckstein, Dave Wood, James Elliott, Brian Cole

November 2002

Ebook: $47.99

Print & Ebook: $65.99

Print: $59.99

Customer Reviews

REVIEW SNAPSHOT®

by PowerReviews

oreilly Regular Expression Pocket Reference

4.0

(based on 3 reviews)

Reviews

Reviewed by 3 customers

Sort by

Displaying reviews 1-3

7/11/2006

3.0

Somewhat vague and slightly out of focus

By av

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Regular Expression Pocket Reference:

In some cases, this book can be useful to quickly find a piece of info for one of the specifically covered tools. But it leaves something to be desired and I look forward for an amended edition.

The generic part is obviously minimal, but it could have been more accurate: it mentions that syntax and availability vary by implementation, but never attempts to classify which implements which. Not even the distinction between BRE and ERE. Character representations described in pages 5-13 are good for a lecture on "most available types of regular expressions": a rather vague concept.

By comparison, Perl Pocket Reference's chapter on regex is both more concise and more accurate than

Regular Expression Pocket Reference's chapter on Perl. However, the latter features a discussion on operators for regex and some examples that may make it clearer than the former. A complete example, using perl's command line options -i, -p, and -e, is missing.

There are repetitions, e.g. tables 26-30 for PCRE are reprinted exactly alike, except for different page breaks, as tables 31-35 for PHP's perl-compatible regex.

Emacs is missing. Is it less popular than vi?

7/12/2005

4.0

A Review of Regular Expression Pocket Reference""

By G. Roush

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Regular Expression Pocket Reference:

One of the most difficult things when working with regular expressoins -- at least for me -- is dealing with different implementations (i.e., Perl, Java, Python, PHP, UNIX tools, etc.) The basics of regexes and pattern matching don't vary all that much, but each implementation is just different enough that the smae line of code can yield different results. If you work with more than one of these implementations, keeping track of differences in metacharacters and metasequences can be nearly impossible. This is especially true when -- as is the case with me -- you deal with regexes somewhat intermittently.

This is one of the main reasons why the "Regular Expression Pocket Reference"

was written and this is why I keep it close at hand. This book will not really teach you how to use regexes, nor will it tell you how to use, say, Perl. If, however, you use Perl and you know how to use regexes but just can't remember whether you can disallow backtracking for text matched by a subpattern, then this book will save you quite a bit of time and effort.

If you're wondering what it means to "disallow backtracking for text matched by a subpattern," or when you would want to use it, buy "Mastering Regular Expressions" or a similar title. The "Regular Expression Pocket Reference" is designed to be a quick reference tool, and it serves this purpose very well. I would recommend it especially for those who work with regular expressions intermittently or who work with several different implementations.

10/10/2003

5.0

Regular Expression Pocket Reference Review

By George Woolley of Oakland.pm

from Undisclosed

Comments about oreilly Regular Expression Pocket Reference:

I recommend getting this book if you feel comfortable with regular expressions and regular expressions are important to you.

As one expects from an O'Reilly Pocket Reference, this book is compact but still covers a lot of ground.

For a whole bunch of applications, it provides: tables of various groupings of regex metacharacters' summarizing their syntax and meaning, summaries of other regex related features but not in tabular form, examples, and a few references in case you need to go deeper. The information is concise and well chosen.

This is a reference, but in applications where you use regular expressions less, it may also be useful for expanding your knowledge significantly.

It was for me.

If you wish, take a look at my more detailed review (http://oakland.pm.org/reviews/regexppr.html).