how can i learn regular expressions best?

paullll irish: how can i learn regular expressions?
paullll irish: best
designgods: Hmmm..
designgods: you're looking to learn ruby regex, I assume?
designgods: I learned from a Perl book, then moved to the Perldoc regex references. Since Ruby shares an almost identical syntax, that should be a good start. If you have perl installed on your machine follow examples in a terminal or run a .pl file to get the hang of it.
designgods: move up to larger bodies of text... find some READMEs and see what you can parse out.
designgods: finally, once you've gotten a good feeling, move to the ruby regex docs as well as other illustrative resources (Why's (poignant) Guide was a great overview, and I think he goes into regex a bit)
paullll irish: :D
paullll irish: DONE! thank you!

3 comments ↓

#1 Sean Lins on 07.25.07 at 2:08 pm

Thank you!

#2 AJM on 01.14.08 at 3:19 pm

If you're running windows:
http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/

#3 Lucas on 01.28.08 at 2:39 am

"Mastering Regular Expressions" by Jeffery Friedl is untouchable in this space. It is insane.