Regular Expressions with .NET [DOWNLOAD: PDF] (Digital)

by Dan Appleman (Author), Daniel Appleman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
With the release of Visual Studio .NET, a great deal of attention has been placed on the Visual Studio .NET languages, Visual Basic .NET, C# and Managed C++ (not to mention the dozens of others under development by various companies). It might surprise you to know that yet another language is built into Visual Studio - one that can be used in conjunction with VB .NET, C# or any other .NET language. A language that is terse to such a degree that the term "concise" does not come close to describing its brevity of syntax. A language so cryptic that it can take hours to truly understand a single line of code.

Yet it is a language that can save you hours upon hours of time in any application that involves text processing or data validation. It is a language that can perform complex data validation tasks in a single line of code. It is a language that performs sophisticated search and replace operations on strings. It is a language that should be part of every programmer's toolbox.

The language is the "Regular Expression Language" - a language designed to parse and manipulate blocks of text. This ebook is intended to be a complete introduction to Regular Expressions that can even be read and understood by programmers who have never heard of them. It is also intended to help experienced Regular Expression programmers come up to speed quickly on the .NET implementation of Regular Expressions.

Product Details

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• Format: Adobe Reader (PDF)
• Printable: Yes. This title is printable
• Mac OS Compatible: OS 9.x or later
• Windows Compatible: Yes
• Handheld Compatible: Yes. Adobe Reader is available for PalmOS, Pocket PC, and Symbian OS.
• File Size: 917 KB
• Digital: 68 pages
• Publisher: Daniel Appleman (February 6, 2002)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #696,090 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Regular Expressions are a Must, October 24, 2002

By	Rishon Industries "Lou G" (Forest Hills, New York United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Once you become serious about .NET, you'll find Regular Expressions staring you square in the face. They're there and they are very important, but the .NET documentation doesn't help much in learning about Regular Expressions and how to work with them in .NET.
That's where Dan Appleman's Ebook comes in. I think that Dan has done an absolutley stupendous job in the following 3 areas:
a) Dan explains the essence of Regular Expressions from a general perspective. After all, "Regular Expressions" is a language unto itself, even without .NET. This Ebook gives you a good intuitive feel of how pattern matching is expressed with the "Regular Expressions" language.
b) The Ebook shines in its explanation of .NET's take on Regular Expressions. This book thoroughly explores the various classes and methods that .NET offers for working with Regular Expressions. Dan does a great job teaching you about Groups and Captures.
c) The code download for the book is top-notch. Clearly, there was a lot of thought put into providing meaningful examples to help the reader internalize the .NET approach to processing with
Regular Expression.
I think the Ebook format is perfect for this topic.
I have one criticism, though. I believe that the advertising glop at the end of the end of the Ebook is somewhat extraneous.
A link to this material should have been sufficient.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat disappointing, November 19, 2003

By	David C. Veeneman (Lincolnshire, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm a bit disappointed in this book. I find regular expressions to be a challenging subject, and I was looking for a clear tutorial that would start with the basics and work its way up to more complex expressions. On that basis, I bought this book.

The book's explanation of the basics are a bit thin for my tastes. For example, it jumps into groups and backreferencing on page 11, while I'm still struggling with more basic concepts. If you already 'get' regular expressions, this book is probably a good text. However, if you are struggling with the fundamentals, as I am, you may view its explanation as being weak.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Making Regular use of something very un-Regular looking, March 5, 2002

By	"johnnyjack" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

My previous knowledge of Regular Expressions was minimal - I knew that they existed and they they were supposedly "powerful", but other than that, I was in the dark.

With a background in .Net, it was easy for me to pick up the skill with the help of Appleman and his relatively short eBook on the subject. Now I can't wait to apply my new skill to some projects that I have in the hopper.

The thing I like most about Appleman is that he always seems to be learning the subject along with you instead of sitting up on a perch of all-knowingness and spilling down information to you. I look forward to reading more from the founder of aPress.