Mastering Regular Expressions Reviews

• I need more stars... Bravo Jeffrey

  
  By A29I2OST2YY603 on 2001-12-09
  Jeffrey Friedl's "Matering Regular Expressions" does a facinating job in taking you through the jungle (and I mean jungle) of RegExp.

  I am a Perl/CGI programmer, and I had considered myself good at RegExp even before I read this book. Most of the things I knew were from Programming Perl, 3rd edition (chapter 5, Pattern Matching). But I still decided to give Jeffrey a chance since I was having some trouble with my Parse::Syntax module, which is designed to parsing *any* programming language and highlighting the syntax accordingly (provided it has a syntax/grammer file written for the specific language). The accuracy of the parser (and more importantly the speed) does depend on well crafted regular expressions.

  As I started reading the book, I couldn't stop. I took it to my school's cafeteria with me and no one could make me leave untill I finished the whole book. I was excited. I was pleased! Here is the outline of tha chapters:

  Chapter 1 and 2 introduce you to regular expressions and give some basic regex examples. Mail utility and date matching is two of them.

  Chapter 3 mostly talks about conventions that all the regex tools follow and their differences.

  Chapter 4 deals with Traditional NFA, POSIX NFA and DFA regex engines and their pros and cons. What you'll like the most is the details provided by the author on each and every single example. He also uses a lot of step-by-step illustrations to take you deeper into the regex engine itself and see/feel how it works. He shows the point of backtrackings and provides awesome benchmarks. He uses such examples of matching a quote, allowing escaped quotes inside the pattern, matching C-style comments, IP addresses and many more.

  Chapter 5 deals with writing efficient regular expressions for NFA engines. It also re-vists some of the examples provided in the previous chapter and fine-tunes them.

  Chapter 6 and 7 deals with Tool-Language specific features of Regex engines. Chapter 6 is dedicated to Awk, Tcl and GNU Emacs, whereas chapter 7 is entirely dedicated to Perl, good over 100 pages of Perlism.

  It's true that there're features that Perl 5.6 offers when it comes to regex that didn't exist at the time this book went to press, (lookbehinds, for example). But this no way makes this book dated. Just take my word for it. Jeffrey put together a great masterpiece that will not die for many years, no matter how fast the technology tends to enhance
  Haven't read anything more exciting than this for many years.
  
  

• Great book with problems

  
  By A1TH5D9I442MFF on 2000-11-21
  I haven't read the book from cover to cover but have read parts of it. I don't deny that it is informative and occasionally helpful (especially if you come from a perl background). But the book as it stands is not appropriate for someone starting out in regular expressions. Instead it provides a lot of depth as far as how regular expressions are used in specific tools and all the different standards for regular expressions.

  But a lot of this information on regular expressions is not relevant or necessary for composing plain vanilla bash regular expressions. I suspect that the majority of readers will find a few chapters helpful, but will skip over at least a few chapters that have no bearing on their work. To spend so much time in a book talking about the different implementations of regular expressions is to beg the question about whether you should read a general book or instead read a book about the implementation of r.e. specific to your computer language.

  I have two complaints. First, the book does not try to teach you the art of writing regular expressions (it assumes a certain level of familiarity already). As a learning book, it may not be satisfy your needs. The second complaint is that the book doesn't include an adequate reference section or at least a section you can refer to when trying to write your own regular expressions. I found myself flipping back and forth from pages to try to find the aspect of regular expressions I need. A more methodical reference chapter or appendix is sorely needed.

  Don't get the impression I am not recommending this book. It is a fine book; only be sure that you thumb through it at a bookstore to make sure that the kind of material it presents is what you are looking for. For me it was not.

  The best teaching book I've found to explain regular expressions is Practical Guide to Linux by Mark Sobell. It's old, but it explains regular expressions, sed, awk and grep better than any book, including this one. This book presented the clearest examples of any computer book I have encountered.
  
  

• Learning Perl? Buy this first!

  
  By on 1998-02-07
  I made the mistake of buying a bunch of books on Perl to try to learn Perl programming. I made progress, but it was slow -- and it beat me down. Then I bought THIS book. Perl's implementation of Regular Expressions is a great deal of the functionality of that language. This is true to the extent that trying to read Perl script without knowing Regular Expressions is tedious at best. This is not just another computer book. Jeffrey Friedl has put his heart and soul into this work, and it shows. He even offers free updates (in the truest, most honest sense of the word) from his own web page. This is the best programming book I own.

  After reading this book, Perl script reads like USA Today! Save yourself lots of heartache. Buy this book, Mastering Regular Expressions -- read it -- THEN learn Perl!
  Jeff Morris
  
  

• Those wise birds!

  
  By A2YO551XNW2QE2 on 2001-05-03
  I got Mastering Regular Expressions in 1998 and I peek back regularly and it am proud to say is one of most used and useful books I own.

  Regular expressions are for everyone. They are simple to write and can be close to impossible to read and even unimaginably harder to understand. But reading comes after you can craft one.

  And this art of crafting RE is explained in astonishing detail and analysis in this book. Reader is carefully guided through basics, differences and common and uncommon pitfalls. Some of the parts are definitely not for the faint hearted! And this is especially true for parts that cover Perl RE. While main topic is Perl RE engine, a deep-enough travel through different RE dialects is made to help RE-crafting in almost any tool that supports REs.

  I've used the methods described in the book in tools as different as MS VC++, various editors, search engines and programming (Perl, PHP, C++, ...). The ability to use RE usually impressed people to the point they were sure I am using some incredible magic.

  But I must say that the most useful feature delivered in this book was ability to PARSE, UNDERSTAND and FIX a (slow, broken, strange acting) RE. This can be slowly absorbed by reader's (open) mind while carefully reading the book. The difference between meant/written can be as extreme as it can get in RE. I can (proudly) say I've been able to fix several complex REs, by simply (one could say blindly) following the rules laid in the book.

  My opinion is thath without this book real understanding of RE is almost impossible. I recommended it all of those who use programs that support (any form) of RE engine. It will help them solve some (hard) problems incredibly fast!
  
  

• Simply Outstanding

  
  By A2F6W93IG2793A on 2002-09-26
  I bought this book on a whim, mainly because I try to buy (and read... ugh!) a hard-core technical book every month or so, but mainly because my UNIX scripting abilities have become rusty with disuse. I used to be able to write a tight, 10-line csh script to mangledit thousands of files at a single time. Now I hack away at files manually with vi. The other day, I even forgot how to search & replace. My kung fu isn't nearly what it used to be.

  It usually takes me about a month to slog through a new book (especially academic texts, which are great but make you want to have a stiff martini before each new chapter) but I tore through Friedl's book in a few days. It's an outstanding reference for understanding & learning to use regular expressions.

  Regexes can be cryptic to say the least, but Friedl offers many examples, broken down into step-by-step instructions and explanations of how each regex works (in many cases, right down to the individual character level). He covers a variety of platforms and languages - the hardcore Perl enthusiast will enjoy this book greatly, but he offers fairly equal time to alternative languages like Java and the "grep" family.

  All that said, this book is an outstanding technical reference, pure and simple, for two reasons:

  - Friedl uses an interesting new typesetting convention to illustrate which sections of text are regular expressions, and which sections are not. It's hard to describe (and impossible to reproduce here) but they look like 90-degree braces at the upper-left and lower-right corners. This is a FANTASTIC approach and I for one would love to see this extended to other technical books.

  - Speaking of other things I would love to see extended to other technical books, THIS BOOK HAS ALMOST NO ERRORS! This is even more impressive considering the fact that, with regular expressions, screwing up EVEN A SINGLE CHARACTER is significant. Nothing [upsets]memore than spending $50-100 perfectly good dollars on a sloppy, error-laden, grammatically-challenged, poorly-edited, ill-reviewed and badly-structured book (which pretty much describes 90% of all the technical books out there). He made a few mistakes, the vast majority of which are extremely trivial in nature, and all of which were quickly posted to his website as errata. If only the other 90% of the technical authors out there were even half as diligent.

  All told, this book belongs on your bookshelf.
  
  

• i wish all tech books were this good
  By ALNJ932Z31SHE on 2002-03-07
  I can't say enough good things about this book.

  Regular expressions are such a powerful concept, but some of that power would be easy to miss if not guided correctly through the topic. Jeffrey Freidl does a great job of making a potentially very dry subject interesting, even while getting very involved in all the complexities that are inherent in such a powerful abstraction. He also does a good job of presenting both the general topic of regular expressions and the specific characteristics of the various tools available to process them.

  This is a book that you will come back to many times. I actually read it as a precursor to learning Perl several years ago. Then just recently I revisited it while taking a class on compiler construction and found that it still had useful insights for me. If you're a committed programmer, this book should be on your shelf.

  Also, the criticisms I've read in reviews here are pretty misguided. It is "chatty", because the author has a genuine enthusiasm for his subject. It is also not a "teach yourself regular expressions in 24 hours" kind of book. There are actually lots of cookbook style examples, but the main point of the book is to give you a solid enough understanding of the general topic that you don't need examples to craft your regexes. In this case, little patience as a reader will be much rewarded.
  
  

• Will help you make sense of a daunting subject.
  By A367R52A6P9YYL on 2000-06-07
  This is a book about Regular Expressions 'for Perl and Other Tools' but really it's a book about Perl. Other tools are covered, but coverage is a bit woolly, so if you are reading it to get the low-down on Python's RegEx capabilities etc. this book won't get you far. I can't help that feel that if the book had just concentrated on Perl, rather than giving sketchy coverage of `Other Tools', it could have been even better (and would have definitely got five starts). That said, the extra coverage (particularly the RegEx engine material) was very interesting and has turned out invaluable in practice.

  If you are an absolute beginner to Perl or programming you will need another book(s) to get the most out of this one, but it is a gentle and thorough introduction that won't leave you scratching your head, which is a feat in itself considering the complexity of Regular Expressions.

  This is an excellent book for getting the most out of Perl's RegEx capabilities, you will close the back cover feeling that you genuinely have Mastered the subject. It is without doubt the best book available on the subject, nicely written, with a friendly and un-patronising tone (grammatical errors aside), you can't really go wrong with this one.

  There could have been some more useful real world examples/projects included, and the book could probably do with an overhaul (it was published in 97) to accommodate Perl 5.6 and other developments (O'Reilly are you listening?), but it is still the best out there.

  If RegEx is a subject you need to get to grips with, this book is the solution.
  
  

• Masterfully written; bit of overkill for nonprogrammers
  By A24GD1AWG77IDJ on 2000-01-23
  Whether you are searching text documents with BBedit or flagging Usenet articles with Newswatcher, learning to use regular expressions can make your life a lot easier. Regular expressions ("regex") are text strings that allow you to search for complex variations of words and phrases. For instance, with the simple regex "gr[ea]y" you can flag any instances of the words "gray" or "grey". While a lot of applications support regex, finding out how to use this powerful function can be very difficult. There is suprisingly little online documentation of regex.

  Friedl's excellent book fills this void. In the introductory material, he covers what a regex is and how to use the regex language to do your own searches. The rest of the book, however, is aimed at programmers only, dealing with how various programming languages (such as Perl) implement regex. If all you want to do is use regex for searching text files or flagging Usenet articles, most of the book will not be useful to you. However, until someone comes out with a pocket manual of regex, Friedl's book is the only game in town.
  
  

• Don't fear the regular expression
  By A2OG1XL6DPRU45 on 1999-12-18
  One of the most frustrating things about learning the perl language is learning to deal with its regular expressions. This book does a great job of explaining complicated examples and has challenging problem solving situations. It covers mostly input manipulation, searching and filtering, which are probably the most important aspects of regular expressions. I give it 3 stars is because its a tad bit on the wordy side. O'Reilly books useually do a good job of explaining things, but there were many details about regular expressions that I could have done without reading about. There is a consistant lack of examples throughout the book as well. If you are going to throw a lot of complicated technical information at the reader, it is a good idea to illustrate consepts no matter how big or small. I can't say anything else negative about the book though, because if you are struggling with regular expressions I would recommend that you get it. After a few chapters you will have a better understanding and be writing your own confusing perl regular expressions.
  
  
• PHP programmer says: EXCELLENT value! Everything's here.
  By A15868VVCYQTJU on 2001-01-04
  If you are an intermediate-or-better PHP programmer who wants to get a handle on regular expressions, you'll find this book so incredibly handy. I'm only a few chapters into the book and already I get the gist of regexs and how to use them with PHP... plus the Perl examples are very, very clear (the author stays focused on regex, Perl is just used to put it in a program's context, so he explains clearly what is going on with each line and you can see how it would translate easily to PHP)... the first chapter of this book did more to explain regexs than spending weeks searching the web for a *clear* tutorial.

  I suspect I'll skip most of the second half of the book-- after all, it's called "mastering regular expressions," and I don't really want to master them, I just want to be really good and then keep going with other stuff. (The author spends chapters looking at nearly EVERY regex tool out there, etc... which is not useful to me since I know I'm going to be using regexs 99% of the time in PHP.) If there is anything I could change about this book, it would be to put the first five-or-so chapters into a separate slim volume and *PLEASE* include a quick reference card for all the metachars! (that's my next purchase...)

  But listen, if you want to LEARN regexs, this book does the job, the writing is crystal-clear, the mini-quizzes every few pages are excellent, the typographic conventions (used to really make the expressions clear) are clever and smart, and this book has EVERYTHING you will EVER need on regular expressions, in your entire life. Well worth the $; you won't ever need another regex book again.
  
  

• Very thorough. Very Unix.
  By A2PA539BKV4ELQ on 2002-04-03
  This book is a good follow-up on the 80 pages about Pattern Matching in Programming Perl (3rd Ed.) if you need to get into more detail. The book is really most useful to Perl programmers. It covers RegEx's in great depth and shares experiences which would take years to build up on your own. The book claims to cover platform-neutral tools, but the content of the book seems to be written almost solely from Unix experiences.

  If you want to learn more about RegEx implementation on a non-Unix platform, chances are this book won't fulfill your needs. However, there are exceptions. The Microsoft .NET Framework e.g. is an implementation designed for compatibility with Perl 5 RegEx's (adding features such as right-to-left matching).

  Buy this book if you're a Unix user and want to know all about Regular Expressions. Otherwise, think twice. It might be a bit too specific for your needs.
  
  

• Separates the players from the punters
  By A89KN0ADLUNPW on 2002-08-13
  Regular expressions help you "lex", or make sense of text input to your program in a method much more powerful than your junior college or MCSE program taught you.
  In the mid '80's I wrote a lexer/parser/compiler as a class assignment. I definitely used regular expressions in order to break the input down into lexemes so I could generate object code. Back then, we learned regular expressions "the hard way".
  This book makes learning them easier. You don't have to be writing a compiler in order to make use of regexes! Spam filtering is my current use for them.

  2nd ed. vs. 1st ed.: He attacks the subject more seriously.
  He (as far as I can tell) dropped "vi" coverage.
  He uses Perl 5.8 for his examples, though has chapters for the most popular regex engines, including VB.NET.
  Summary: I think it's easier to follow and more business-oriented than the 1st edition, though don't toss the 1st edition. You'll need them both.
  
  

• So good, I bought it twice!
  By A3FYXZJWXRO1QJ on 2003-01-05
  In spite of the vow that Friedl would not put himself (and his family) through the rigors of writing a followup to his first edition, I sure am glad he made the decision to write a second edition. Over 5 years ago, I got the first such book and found it to be a humbling experience -- realizing just how little I *really* knew about regular expressions (in spite of thinking my skills were quite advanced in that area).

  Now, years later and as an instructor of UNIX at North Lake College in Irving, Texas, I highly recommend this book to even our first year students. Friedl's clear explanation of this topic and the manner in which he presents the material makes it comprehensible to even those that have never had experience with regex's before. Like Perl's Larry Wall, Jeffrey Friedl has a strong background in natural languages. That contributes not only to bhis lucid writing style but also helps in terms of understanding regex's as a "little language".

  This 2nd edition is particularly welcome because of its extensive coverage of regular expressions in the context of Java. That ons aspect alone is sufficient to get the updated second edition (to say nothing of the enhancements in Perl since the first edition of the book).
  
  

• RE: Third Edition
  By A20DMHOHEG8Y7Q on 2006-08-21
  §
  The third edition just came out -- and that makes 10 years since this book was first published. That statistic alone indicates the steady value of "Mastering Regular Expressions" across the constant changes in applied software technology over that time. Regular expressions, still the most under-used power tool, needs a book like this.
  
  Specifically, this third edition features enhanced coverage of PHP in the early tutorial chapters, plus an all new chapter devoted entirely to PHP regular expressions.
  
  Also new in this edition, the Java chapter has been rewritten and expanded to reflect new features as Java itself has developed.
  §
  
  
• Don't call me a reference book
  By A22UTIKID27KWJ on 2003-06-02
  I found other books much more helpful on solving a sticky regular expression problem. The author himself sums up his attitude towards users who want to find the solution fast without reading his 'story'
  "Readers familiar with regular expressions might feel that they can immediately begin using this book as a detailed reference, flipping directly to the section on their favorite utility. I would like to discourage that."

  So, for anyone with a problem and you think your are going to flip to a section and solve it, sorry, the author says he discourages that and you must read his story first.

  "To get the most out of this book, read it as a story first".

  I would rather have an experienced expert focus on creating a book to solve problems, not show me how smart he is. And reference books should be writen as reference books and leave the stories to Tom Clancy.
  
  

• Appallingly chatty and unprofessional style.
  By A6FSXN0ER1AOA on 2000-04-06
  The author's unamusing cuteness is a constant distraction. In the single brief section explaining NFA vs. DFA regex engines, for example, we are treated to:

  "We (humans with advanced neural nets between our ears) can see that if we're matching 'tonight,' the third alternative is the one .... Despite their brainy origins, a regex-directed engine can't come to that conclusion ...."

  "What this really means may seem vague now, but it will all be spelled out just after the mysteries of life are revealed (in just two pages)."

  "(You know, if I could find a way to include 'It's not over until the fat lady sings," in this paragraph, I would.)"

  With phrases like this throughout the text (and even in the table of contents -- e.g. one section is entitled, "A Really Crummy Analogy"), one wonders how O'Reilly editors could possibly have OK'ed this immaturity.

  The few uses I made of the index suggest many omissions and errors. "\A" for example cites only page 236 (Dec. 1998 printing), although no hint is offered there of its definition. "\c", for another example, is nowhere to be found. (It is incompletely explained in the text at p. 241.)

  The index also reflects indifference to the reader's time and productivity. A high proportion of entries force a second lookup ("see ...") by not providing any page numbers themselves.

  I found the discussion of subtleties involving matching with the "\G" Multi-Match Anchor clever and informative. The author probably knows his stuff and has things to say. Much of the guilt for the book's overwhelming defects can be laid at the door of the editors at O'Reilly.
  
  

• Accelerated Learning!
  By ADICZA8LGYZV0 on 2000-07-03
  Within two weeks after receiving Mr. Friedl's book, I was able to write a concise Perl regex (see below) to find arbitrarily complex bible citations (e.g., Is 1:4,27:6-10,65:1-66:1,5-15) in my bible study files. I'm not a programmer by trade or hobby, have no Perl background or any appreciable experience with regexes thru grep or similar tools (my background in data modeling using EBNF helped me grasp the regex concept). Mr. Friedl's orderly and thorough progression from simple to complex material allowed me to easily tailor my reading and "practicum" towards a specific problem, while learning a great deal about regexes (and Perl as well, although this is not a Perl book). Mr. Friedl's humor helped keep my interest, although that's purely a matter of taste. I strongly recommend this book if you're looking to go from 0-60 mph on regexes, both conceptually and practically, within a couple of weeks. If you're looking for "recipes," you'll be disappointed.

  /$bk\s*($ver_rng+|$ch_rng+)+/g
  
  

• Never has so much been made of so little
  By A2TOTQCV35PGY8 on 2000-03-23
  If you're looking for a handy desktop reference this book is NOT it. When faced with a short-fused development schedule and needing to get up to speed with regexps rather quickly I found the book to be difficult to navigate, inconcise, and the overuse of bold, italics, and foreign (Japanese?) characters and other oddities very annoying. I thought the book went way beyond regular expressions and therefore found it of little use as a reference guide. It is better suited as a tutorial for someone that has a lot of time on his/her hands. A much better reference, also from O'Reilly, can be found in "JavaScript - The Definitive Reference", by Danny Goodman.
  
  
• Eureka!
  By A329SDBS4141MJ on 2001-12-01
  Okay, so maybe I'm no Archimedes, but this book suddenly illuminated the world of regular expressions for me. I'd toiled through three or four other books, some of them pretty good, without getting it.
  After just a few chapters of this one, I can finally say that I understand regular expressions and can use them to my advantage instead of just being vaguely aware that there is a better way to do what I've been trying to do.
  Don't wait, buy it now!
  
  
• Understand Regexes
  By A1SD255M87B5PV on 2000-04-18
  As somone else said, "If you're looking for a handy desktop reference this book is NOT it." But it doesn't claim to be. The title is "Mastering Regular Expressions" and that's what the book is for. If you want a quick reference so you can just find a regex to do what you want, then you're not interested in mastering regular expressions, are you? This book is for someone who wants an in-depth understanding of regexes - not someone with a looming deadline. This book is in the category of "Teach a man to fish, and you've fed him for a lifetime."
  
  
• Finally an instructional book that actually teaches!
  By on 1999-01-06
  Jeffrey Friedl is one of those rare authors who actually knows how to teach instead of simply trying to impress people with his knowledge, as so many authors try to do. From cover to cover, he takes a thorough, methodical approach to regular expressions and doesn't leave ANY stone unturned, makes NO ASSUMPTIONS about his readers' knowledge, and leaves NOTHING to chance. He is completely knowledgeable about regular expressions and genuine in his desire to pass this knowledge to his readers. Anyone new to regular expressions will have gotten their money's worth by the time they finish the second chapter. Now I just wish someone would pay Jeffrey Friedl to re-write half the computer books on my reference shelf! Authors take note! We don't care how smart you are - we measure you by your ability (and sincere desire) to pass this knowledge on to us! Jeffrey Friedl sets the standard with Mastering Regular Expressions.
  
  
• Poorly assembled time waster
  By A16OLSITF6JNZT on 2002-05-21
  I found little use for this book and I think any moderate to average perl programmer would have no need for it.
  The book itself is much too long and full of uninteresting fluff that only a few really lonely will bother to read. Luckily I didn't have to waste any money on this book, and I urge you not to waste yours.
  A book on this subject could have been interesting and helpful, but Jeff Fried ensures that you will get no joy nor use from reading it.
  
  
• I wish I could give it 6 stars!
  By A2AGHCMHFTU7IK on 2002-12-30
  The book is a perfection! Everything is excellent here: style, accuracy, language. Jeffrey managed to give formal and complete coverage of formal parts of regular expressions together with detailed explanations of WHEN and HOW certain expressions should be used in real world.
  Use of regular expressions can turn into a mess because usually there are many ways of mapping given task to regular expressions. When going through every practical task, Jeffrey Friedl carefully explains what variant should be used and why. To let readers check their understanding, author often puzzles them with brief tasks that readers are supposed to solve and verify the answer on a next page. I enjoyed every puzzle, and it really helped me to master my skills. While still reading the book, I was able within a few hours to write a simple RE-based parser for my work.
  Highly recommended!
  
  
• The definitive guide to regular expressions
  By A1BIZLF0WQ779Z on 2003-04-27
  Regular Expressions ("regexes" for short), have been officially integrated into Java with the release of J2SE 1.4. While many Java developers are just discovering them, they have been a fixture in other languages and tools for quite some time. Regular expressions are powerful tools for performing all kinds of text processing, but they require no small amount of knowledge to use effectively and efficiently. This is where "Mastering Regular Expressions" comes to the rescue.

  The book's nine chapters are categorized into three sections. The book first teaches the basics of regular expressions, crafting simple regexes, and the different features and flavors available in various regex packages. Next, the reader is given invaluable information about how the different types of regular expression engines work, as well as techniques for crafting practical and efficient expressions. The final section covers language specific issues in Perl, Java, and .NET.

  The author does an outstanding job leading the reader from regex novice to master. The book is extremely easy to read and chock full of useful and relevant examples. The author offers up questions along the way designed to engage the reader to apply what he has learned. In-line references to other parts of the book containing information pertinent the particular topic being discussed are also very helpful.

  Regular expressions are valuable tools that every developer should have in their toolbox. "Mastering Regular Expressions" is the definitive guide to the subject, and an outstanding resource that belongs on every programmer's bookshelf.
  
  

• Comprehensive Guide to Regular Expressions
  By A23VGBG17K5NJ3 on 2003-05-28
  Most computer programmers have heard of regular expressions, discussed in hushed tones and conjuring images of Unix gurus and their incomprehensible commands and godlike mastery of their systems, yet few actually know enough about regular expressions or how they work to do more than a simple word match using one, if that.

  This book covers regular expressions from top to bottom in great and exhaustive detail, including the hows and whys of performance and supported features between the different engines that process them. Though geared mainly toward Perl, the examples and text will apply to nearly any system that provides support, from PHP to ASP to Python.

  The text is fairly dense and is not exactly geared toward the novice programmer, though. I've had classes in Finite State Machines and still had to really apply my grey matter in a few spots to understand everything being discussed. However, the understanding the reader gains upon completion of the text is invaluable and will expand one's programming potential exponentially.

  The one real lack of the book is a good overview and quick-reference card, but on the whole, the book is a good selection from the O'Reilly library and well worth the read of any serious programmer.
  
  

• Best Title on the Subject
  By A2V0387TN0IQW1 on 2006-08-28
  If you have ever been frustrated trying to figure out Regular Expressions (RegEx) based only on a table showing symbols and a few paragraphs of explanations obviously written by someone who assumes you are already familiar with the concept, then this book is for you. Don't be daunted by 480+ page size of this title; before you reach the end of chapter 2 you find yourself with a solid understanding of the concepts, structure, syntax and "keywords" in common use by those utilities, programming languages and applications that incorporate RegExs. The middle of the book covers implementation of RegEx in different environments, techniques for creating the expressions, and methods for creating efficient expressions. The end chapters are specific for Perl, Java, VB.NET and PHP users.
  
  The only minor issues I had was in the tools used to demonstrate the concepts. Although no tool used cost the reader money if they wish to hands-on follow along, some of the downloads are from third-party sites which have no guarantee of offering the download by the time you get the book. Additionally, the author makes heavy use of Perl to demonstrate RegEx in scripting, which is fine for Perl users, but those that use other languages to fend for themselves. Seeing additional examples in other free languages, such as VBScript or JScript would have been nice.
  
  Overall, Mastering Regular Expressions is an excellent choice for both learning the basics as well as better preparing yourself to apply them in real-world situations. The writing style is easy to understand and follow, and the layout allows this book to be a learning resource now, and a decent general reference later.
  
  
• verbose and over rated
  By on 2001-03-23
  I got this book because it was highly recommended by two PERL experts, Tom Christiansen, and the author of EFFECTIVE PERL.

  But this 300 page book is written as if it were a novel and not a technical book. It could easily have been half the length, and I'm not exagerating. The long chapter on how NFAs & DFAs work will be of interest to few people.

  I expected to learn all sorts of cool tricks via regular exppressions and was dissapointed. Sure there are a few good examples, but at far too high a price in time involved and money.

  This book will only be of use to the very few people who are really into NFA theory. For most people, this is a wasteful book. Its possibly the worst, least useful technical book Ive read.
  
  

• A necessary volume for any serious perl programmer
  By A1RPTVW5VEOSI on 2001-08-01
  There's not much to say about this book, really; like any O'Reilly book, it distills a lot of useful information into a compact, useful book. Any serious perl programmer needs a solid understanding of regular expressions, and this is volume to get it from. The best endorsement I can give this bok is this: Unlike a lot of perl books, we don't share this one in my office- we all have our own copy.
  
  
• The Bible of RegEx
  By A3MLKJ1HHA2SX0 on 2004-04-30
  One of the hardest things, even for a seasoned programmer to grasp is regular expressions. They are powerful ways to search, manipulate and parse text fields and can often take several lines of code and shrink it down to a mystic, but powerful, expression.

  If you have ever had to parse a file for information, you know that one of the things that still haunts any programmer nowadays is how to match text. In this day and age of Object Oriented Programming, Web Services, etc. the power of Regex holds firm.

  Throughout this book the author takes great care not to overwhelm the reader with tons of code that has no meaning. The power of the book comes from the fact that if you read, and follow along, through the examples you will gain an understanding of how to do the techniques the author is referring to. At times it may seem like you have to read over a section twice, but you will realize that as you carry forth into the next section the material you read previously has turned into something you can now apply -- not just another example you can cut and paste and never really learn technique behind.

  This is a powerful book, covering many, many pages. Noone should expect to sit down and read it cover to cover and be done with it. The benefit comes from reading, applying, and referencing. I find myself using it several times a week to lookup information on Regular Expressions and to held solidify knowledge of techniques that I have used in the past.

  Whether you are a Windows, Unix, or even Macintosh person -- RegEx holds the key to text manipulation -- and this book holds the map you need to find that key.
  
  

• Mastering Regular Expressions
  By AXSQTVSQAZKKQ on 2006-08-23
  I've corresponded personally with Jeffrey Friedl several times over the last few years, and I remember being at once impressed with his attention to detail and his focus. I was invited to be one of the technical review editors for this third edition of his authoritative book on Regular Expressions, but had to pass due to time constraints.
  
  However, I am pleased to state that whoever the tech reviewers were, they did a thorough job on this one from O'Reilly. This book has matured over these three editions to become what I would consider the most detailed and valuable book about Regex on the planet - and that means whatever your favorite programming language or platform is.
  
  You see, Regular Expressions is in itself a language, and transcends programming languages and platforms because the concepts are basically the same across all languages - whether it be Perl, JAVA, C#, Visual Basic, Javascript, PHP, Ruby, Python, TCL - you name it.
  
  And this book focuses on the mastery of regex, not being a reference tool. Though each language has a different syntax for handling objects and methods, the underlying objects and methods are the same with Regex, so even complex examples shown in one language directly translate to the other languages.
  
  Suffice to say that there are basic concept chapters that are really language - agnostic, and then specific sections on PHP, .NET, JAVA, and Perl. The book covers practical Regex techniques and most importantly, it gets you to the conceptual level where you can begin constructing Regex patterns on your own, without having to look for "examples".
  
  For .NET developers, Jeffrey provides a complete table-based overview of .NET's Regular Expression flavor, with a focus on the new features available in .NET 2.0, including class subtraction, RegexOptions, and named capture.
  
  In sum, let me just say that any developer who finds the need to manipulate text - whether it be scraping a web page, creating a report, importing data, or a hundred other applications, is going to need Regular Expressions. Jeffrey's book provides a complete and mature approach that is fresh, timely and detailed. I would recommend this book for any developer.
  
  
  

• Regular Expression Pocket Reference: Regular Expressions for Perl, Ruby, PHP, Python, C, Java and .NET (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly))
• sed & awk (2nd Edition)
• Learning Perl, 5th Edition
• Classic Shell Scripting
• Programming Perl (3rd Edition)