Resources for Regular Expressions

Just wanted to share a few nice regular expression resources for the next time you need to use regex.

RegExhibit: Test regular expressions as you type

If you’re on a Mac and you don’t have RegExhibit yet, you should. It allows you to fine tune your regular expressions live. If you’ve done any work with regex, you might have an idea of how handy that is. Additionally, it will color code your groups, which is incredibly handy for figuring out which pieces are being matched with which groups. Particularly handy when you have multiple and/or nested groups in a very long pattern.

Download RegExhibit on MacUpdate.

If you’re on Windows, fear not. There are a few options (that I haven’t used personally, but I saved you the trouble of Googling it yourself):

• RegExTester, which looks very similar to RegExhibit.

• A Vista gadget to test regular expressions.

• RegexDesigner, more for .NET.

Cheat Sheets

Not much to say other than download and print out the following:

• Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet from ILoveJackDaniel’s.

• PHP Cheat Sheet which also contains some regex, also from ILoveJackDaniel’s.

• Javascript Cheat Sheet from everybody’s favorite, ILoveJackDaniel’s.

Links of Interest

• Regular-Expressions.info is probably the best site on regular expressions on the internet.

• Regular expressions on Wikipedia.

• Regular Expression Library, a user-submitted library of regular expression patterns. Not as fun as writing them yourself, but worth knowing about. Also has a regular expression tester.

• regextester.com, test your patterns online.