Regular expressions have been part of the programmer’s toolkit for a long time, with their creation by Stephen Cole King in 1951. Their ability to match word patterns make them a powerful tool for ...

The first time I ever encountered a regular expression was many years ago now, but I still remember my first thoughts on it: What is this string-like thing? I don’t want to touch it, it looks scary. I ...

Let's say we need a JavaScript function that will take a string of tagged text (that is, it contains Extensible Markup Language (XML) markup) and return only the tags (and not the text that the tags ...

Regular expressions give Tim Patrick the creeps, but he overcame his fears by discovering specially crafted regex patterns can access data in a way that’s actually kind of cool. I've always been ...

In the Star Wars universe, not everyone uses a lightsaber, and those who do wield them had to build them themselves. There’s something to be said about that strategy. Building a car or a radio is a ...

Regular expressions come in handy for all varieties of text processing, but are often misunderstood--even by veteran developers. Here's a look at intermediate-level regular expressions and what they ...

Regex is a powerful – yet overlooked – tool in search and data analysis. With just a single line, you can automate what would otherwise take dozens of lines of code. Short for “regular expression,” ...