The first time I ever encountered a regular expression was many years ago now, but I still remember my first thoughts on it: What is this string-like thing? I don’t want to touch it, it looks scary. I ...

Java’s character and assorted string classes offer low-level support for pattern matching, but that support typically leads to complex code. For simpler and more efficient coding, Java offers the ...

Whether you are parsing logs or validating input, using regular expressions is a great way to accomplish both of these things. The problem is: regular expressions can be hard and that will only grow ...

Regular expressions — the things you feed to programs like grep — are a bit like riding a bike. It seems impossible until you learn to do it, and then it’s easy. Part of their bad reputation is ...

Quick: If you shout "regular expressions" in a crowd of Linux users, what happens? Answer: Everyone will tell you the right way to use them, and every answer will be different. Regular expressions -- ...