http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Editing/Regular-Expressions A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Editing and Regular Expressions in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-10 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Editing/Regular-Expressions http://tc.eserver.org/36488.html http://tc.eserver.org/36488.html Regular expressions figure into all kinds of text-manipulation tasks. Searching and search-and-replace are among the more common uses, but regular expressions can also be used to test for certain conditions in a text file or data stream. You might use regular expressions, for example, as the basis for a short program that separates incoming mail from incoming spam. http://tc.eserver.org/34211.html http://tc.eserver.org/34211.html There is no gentle beginning to regular expressions. You are either into hieroglyphics big time - in which case you will love this stuff - or you need to use them in which case a headache may be your only reward. http://tc.eserver.org/34214.html http://tc.eserver.org/34214.html Virtually all non-trivial problems require you to filter good data from bad. Discover the many UNIX command line utilities that use regular expressions to discern the relevant from the irrelevant. http://tc.eserver.org/34207.html http://tc.eserver.org/34207.html On the GREP tab of the InDesign Find/Change dialog box, you can construct GREP expressions to find alphanumeric strings and patterns in long documents or many open documents. You can enter the GREP metacharacters manually or choose them from the Special Characters For Search list. GREP searches are case-sensitive by default. http://tc.eserver.org/26327.html http://tc.eserver.org/26327.html Regular expressions, sometimes referred to as regex, grep, or pattern matching, can be a very powerful tool and a tremendous time-saver with a broad range of application. As an extended form of find-and-replace, you can use a regular expression to do things such as perform client-side validation of email addresses and phone numbers, search multiple documents for strings and patterns you wish to change or remove, or extract a list of links from source code. Regex is supported by most languages and tools, but because there can be varying implementations, this article will cover basic principles that are commonly used.