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33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Makes the power of RegExp accessible to everybody, March 7, 2004
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes (Paperback)
This book finally fills a very important niche, since, before it, there wasn't any entry-level Regular Expression manual worth reading. Friedl's book from O'Reilly is excellent, but not suited for beginners. Ben Forta distilled the essential of the subject inside a compact, easy to follow book. Even seasoned programmers often consider the topic arcane, but the author brilliantly managed to cover it in a way that can be easily understood by everybody and still being relevant (avoiding the pitfalls so typical of "dummies" manuals). Every chapter revolves around a set of practical examples, evolving in a linear way, from the very basic up to a few more sophisticated techniques covered inside the last two chapters. Forta covers Regular Expressions in a language and implementation agnostic way; the result is worth reading regardless of the language/platform you use. It's a small, handy manual that makes the power of Regular Expressions accessible to everybody. Heartily recommended!
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent gentle introduction to regular expression, August 26, 2005
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes (Paperback)
Don't be fooled by the book's catchy title, obviously courtesy of Sams marketing department. Just reading through the book's 138 pages will take more than 10 minutes. But if you're willing to sit down with this book for an hour or two, you can certainly learn to write regular expressions that do what you want.
The book consist entirely of a gently paced tutorial that walks you through all the elements of the regular expression syntax, starting out with the most basic elements, advancing all the way to advanced features such as lookaround and conditionals. Each chapter introduces one element, clearly describing it, with several detailed examples. Almost all features of Perl-compatible regular expressions (also used by PHP, Python, JavaScript, Java, .NET, etc.) are discussed.
Obviously, such a small book cannot be comprehensive. Even though the book's cover mentions a variety of programming languages, the book does not tell you at all how to actually use regular expressions with particular programming languages or tools. For that, you'll need to refer to the documentation that comes with the software you're using, or check out the web site at http://www.regular-expressions.info/tools.html
The book also doesn't explain regular expression features such as matching Unicode characters or named capture. These features are only supported by a small number of regular expression flavors.
If you're completely new to regular expressions, Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes will get you up to speed quickly. I would definitely recommend you get yourself a copy. But if you're already familiar with regular expressions, you'll need to look elsewhere for in-depth information.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Practical approach how to use regular expressions, July 4, 2006
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes (Paperback)
I was looking for a guide that teaches me how to use regular expressions. This book seems to do the trick. It starts with simple commands to more and more complex commands. I really like the fact that it is using the same examples over and over again.This way way you can compare the long statements using simple commands with the more sophisticated short statements that accomplish the same task.
Unfortunately, regular expression differ for each development environment (.NET, javascript, Perl, etc.). Although the book tries very hard to explain the differences I can imagine it can be confusing from time to time.
In my case a book about regular expressions using .NET would be more suitable. However, the reviews of the books that cover this topic where not so good.
Another bad point about the book is that it is less suitable to use as a reference. Then again, if you are looking for a book that teaches you how to use regular expressions this is a book worth taking a look at.
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