Mastering Regular Expressions Third Edition

by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl (Author)

107 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0596528126

ISBN-10: 0596528124

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Regular expressions are an extremely powerful tool for manipulating text and data. They are now standard features in a wide range of languages and popular tools, including Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, VB.NET and C# (and any language using the .NET Framework), PHP, and MySQL.

If you don't use regular expressions yet, you will discover in this book a whole new world of mastery over your data. If you already use them, you'll appreciate this book's unprecedented detail and breadth of coverage. If you think you know all you need to know about regularexpressions, this book is a stunning eye-opener.

As this book shows, a command of regular expressions is an invaluable skill. Regular expressions allow you to code complex and subtle text processing that you never imagined could be automated. Regular expressions can save you time and aggravation. They can be used to craft elegant solutions to a wide range of problems. Once you've mastered regular expressions, they'll become an invaluable part of your toolkit. You will wonder how you ever got by without them.

Yet despite their wide availability, flexibility, and unparalleled power, regular expressions are frequently underutilized. Yet what is power in the hands of an expert can be fraught with peril for the unwary. Mastering Regular Expressions will help you navigate the minefield to becoming an expert and help you optimize your use of regular expressions.

Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition, now includes a full chapter devoted to PHP and its powerful and expressive suite of regular expression functions, in addition to enhanced PHP coverage in the central "core" chapters. Furthermore, this edition has been updated throughout to reflect advances in other languages, including expanded in-depth coverage of Sun's java.util.regex package, which has emerged as the standard Java regex implementation.Topics include:

A comparison of features among different versions of many languages and tools
How the regular expression engine works
Optimization (major savings available here!)
Matching just what you want, but not what you don't want
Sections and chapters on individual languages

Written in the lucid, entertaining tone that makes a complex, dry topic become crystal-clear to programmers, and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition offers a wealth information that you can put to immediateuse.

Reviews of this new edition and the second edition:

"There isn't a better (or more useful) book available on regular expressions."

--Zak Greant, Managing Director, eZ Systems

"A real tour-de-force of a book which not only covers the mechanics of regexes in extraordinary detail but also talks about efficiency and the use of regexes in Perl, Java, and .NET...If you use regular expressions as part of your professional work (even if you already have a good book on whatever language you're programming in) I would strongly recommend this book to you."

--Dr. Chris Brown, Linux Format

"The author does an outstanding job leading the reader from regexnovice to master. The book is extremely easy to read and chock full ofuseful and relevant examples...Regular expressions are valuable toolsthat every developer should have in their toolbox. Mastering RegularExpressions is the definitive guide to the subject, and an outstandingresource that belongs on every programmer's bookshelf. Ten out of TenHorseshoes."

--Jason Menard, Java Ranch

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeffrey Friedl was raised in the countryside of Rootstown, Ohio, and had aspirations of being an astronomer until one day he noticed a TRS-80 Model I sitting unused in the corner of the chem lab (bristling with a full 16K of RAM, no less). He eventually began using Unix (and regular expressions) in 1980, and earned degrees in Computer Science from Kent (BS) and the University of New Hampshire (MS). He did kernel development for Omron Corporation in Kyoto, Japan for eight years before moving in 1997 to Silicon Valley to apply his regular-expression know-how to financial news and data for a little-known company called "Yahoo!"

When faced with the daunting task of filling his copious free time, Jeffrey enjoys playing Ultimate Frisbee and basketball with friends at Yahoo!, programming his house, and feeding the squirrels and jays in his back yard. He also enjoys spending time with his wife Fumie, and preparing for the Fall 2002 release of their first "software project" together.

Paperback: 544 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media; Third edition (August 18, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0596528124
ISBN-13: 978-0596528126
Product Dimensions: 7 x 1.3 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 107 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #68,125 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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- #2 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > XML
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Ed Nafziger

Awesome book, horrible fonts

September 2, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Lots of good information, well organized, well presented.
My only complaint is the fonts. Both the text of the book and the source code. The font used for the regular text is very light, I would have preferred a larger, darker, and more bold font. The font used for the source code is absolutely horrible. There are little angle brackets used to identify a block (for example to highlight what has changed from the prior example). They are almost impossible to see. This is important because the author is constantly referring to the highlighted portions. Some pages are darker print than others, its inconsistent.

If another edition of this book is ever made, I would like to see larger more bold font, and use a completely different method to "highlight" portions of text in the code samples.

I wonder if this font issues occur in the Kindle edition...?

7 people found this helpful

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S. Harbour

Great reference and addition to your library

November 19, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is NOT a "cookbook" for regular expressions, but can be a very good reference when you lose your mind with them.
I took this on work travel when I got it, and read it on the plan. The tips for working your way through interpreting regular expressions are very good, and easier to understand than the expressions themselves.
It is NOT language specific, so you need to deal for yourself, with differences between say, how Python does it, and how Perl does it.
This should probably be in most programmers' libraries.

6 people found this helpful

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AmazonFan4Ever

A useful, but verbose regex backgrounder that may come in ...

May 19, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

A useful, but verbose regex backgrounder that may come in handy from time to time. It does have a Perl centric focus and uses an obscure and confusing markup system to delineate regexes in the text. Wish it had a more generalized approach to the topic of constructing regexes.

7 people found this helpful

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SchmidtD

A classic, if not THE regex classic

September 26, 2011

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is one of the best books a person could imagine on a highly technical theme. The author keeps a wonderful balance of theory, practice, and those pesky details that really make all the difference when one sits down to complete a project.

By not asserting himself as a mathematical authority, Friedl lets his cleverness come through in a practical, 'human-to-human' way. There are a few moments when the more theoretically minded reader might want a little more detail, but the balance Friedl keeps is beyond admirable.

In the entire book there are perhaps only a half-dozen pages that are 'challenging' to the mind, yet by the time the reader has finished the book he or she will be amazed, simply amazed, at the complexity of regular expressions that can be interpretted with ease. Of course, writing expressions takes more practice, but the regex muscles won't even notice the feather-light daily tasks of, say, basic data validation after working out on this text.

The book will start the reader looking for possible regex solutions everywhere, and provides enough detail to take the fear out of using them.

3 people found this helpful

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Jonathan A. Broadwell

One of the most influential books of my career

October 11, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I bought this as a parting gift for an intern, based on how much I liked it. This book, along with Learning Perl, opened my eyes to the incredible power of Regular Expressions. The knowledge I've gained has probably saved me a man-year or more of productivity over the course of my career vs. solving the same problems without RegEx's.

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Frobisher

Book is great but avoid in Kindle!!!

January 31, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I have tried reading this on a Paperwhite, which didn't work well, but then I didn't expect it to. Next I tried using a Nexus 7 and that didn't work either, and for a very specific reason:

The font/special characters/colors that Friedl uses to illustrate how a regex will match a string of text works very well - if you can read it. The problem is that they are really tiny on a high-res tablet screen and while you can zoom in on an image or enlarge a font, there seems to be nothing you can do to enlarge those examples.

For me it makes the kindle version unusable.

11 people found this helpful

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J. Brutto

What everyone else said...

March 22, 2007

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

What more can I say besides what everyone else has said.

This is a WONDERFUL and POWERFUL book on Regular Expressions.

From just-beyond-beginner to advanced, this book provides a fantastic view into the world of Regular Expressions and the practical thinking involved with them. However, without at least a semi-understanding of the concepts you will not be able to get through the book very quickly.

I walked away with MUCH more knowledge than I had expected to. This applies to not only regular expressions, but also to rational thinking/planning when it comes to data and programmatic analysis.

4 people found this helpful

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jimmy dean

The best Regex book out there.

January 2, 2012

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book is the best regular expression book out there. I've been writing software for several years and my practical experience didn't scratch the surface of what regular expressions can do and how they work.

If you want to decipher complex regular expressions and write your own, this is THE book to read. Friedl never glosses over important points and he never makes assumptions that you already understand regular expressions. The fact is, most of us just don't. Although regular expressions is mostly a pretty dry topic, Friedl does a good job lightening things up here and there (enough to prevent the topic from being too dry, but not so much that we forget the serious nature of the subject matter).

The typographic conventions are nothing short of groundbreaking, and I believe there is no other volume out there, on the web, or written that does as good of a job walking you through regular expressions, explaining how all the various parts work together and how to do things in your own practical way.

This book teaches you to THINK in regular expressions. Those once cryptic symbols will become powerful tools for you to manipulate and get the results you need. For me, regular expressions were a bit of stumbling block and a possible security risk (since I couldn't decipher really complex regular expressions). Aside from that, I didn't know the difference between NFA, DFA, and Posix NVA or how to optimize regex for these various engines (or whether optimization is even needed).

I strongly recommend this book for both beginners and veterans of regular expressions. It might not change your life, but it will change the way you read and write regular expressions.

6 people found this helpful

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