http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Editing/Search A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Editing and Search 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/Search 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/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.