Mastering Regular Expressions, 3rd Edition

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Mastering Regular Expressions, 3rd Edition

There comes a moment in any serious developer s career theneed to learn how to decipher, appreciate, and ultimately leverage the power ofregular expressions. Like any new, abbreviated syntax, learning regularexpressions can be taxing and exhilarating at the same time. Looking at acomplex assembly of symbols that can be applied toward a thorny character-parsingroutine is frightening to those uninitiated to the elegance of how regularexpressions can do so much with so little. Any determined developer knows thebest way to reach a solution is to work through the problem, and thoseassertive enough to not only learn, but master, regular expressions will reapthe rewards of their efforts to apply toward .NET (and many other languages).

Mastering RegularExpressions does for the reader exactly what the title advertises. Its 10chapters span topics ranging from introductions and examples followed by adeeper analysis of what makes regular expressions tick. After diving deeplyinto the mechanics of expression processing, author Jeffrey E.F. Friedl leadsreaders through the art of crafting elegant and efficient regular expressions,showing the reader some truly astounding constructs. For those who followed thebook to this point, what once were mysterious sequences of back slashes,question marks, asterisks, pound signs, brackets, and numbers, are now anintelligent collection of meaningful filters to be applied to numerous textprocessing routines.

The remaining two-thirds of the book dedicate individualchapters toward implementing regular expressions in Perl, Java, .NET, and PHP. Eventhough .NET developers may be tempted to gloss over the other languages, it sbest to read the other language chapters as intently as the .NET chapter to notonly further appreciate the flexibility and cross-language durability that usingregular expressions provides, but also to see how regex implementations varydepending on the preferred language being used. While some .NET purists mayding the book for having slightly more than 30 pages dedicated to their choicelanguage, those 30 pages pack more important information on the topic than mostthick intermediate and advanced .NET-specific titles.

The .NET chapter in particular focuses on theSystem.Text.RegularExpressions library and using regex in three increasingorders of parsing optimization: parsing, on-the-fly compilation, andpre-compiled regexes. Friedl also dissects the various options the .NETarchitects included in the .NET regex implementation, and even questions thevalue of certain methods, such as RegexOptions.RightToLeft, which the authorultimately concludes to use at your own risk. The remainder of the chapterruns through code exercises and examines the most meaningful methods availablein the RegexOptions, RegexObj, and GroupObj objects.

There s a reason why this book is being published in itsthird iteration. It is a title on which numerous developers cut their teeth onthe topic, and who continue to hold it in high regard (along with other basetechnology books, especially those from O Reilly s Nutshell collection). Mastering Regular Expressions offers clearexamples and no fluff; the content supplies the knowledge necessary to realizethe mastery promise. Those students intent on reading and practicing the book scontents from cover to cover will be rewarded with a skill that will outlivelanguages, frameworks, and operating systems. Making a small investmentnow will pay huge dividends in future practices.

Mike Riley

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Title: Mastering Regular Expressions, 3rd Edition

Author: JeffreyE.F. Friedl

Publisher: O ReillyMedia

ISBN: 1-596-52812-4

Web Site: http://www.oreilly.com

Price: US$44.99

Page Count: 542