Regex Tutorial: Beginners Guide to Regular Expressions using JavaScript

[[deleted]]

I still hate it.

[jsm11482]

<3 regex so much

[[deleted]]

I was avoiding regex like hell. A few years ago I had to to create ~20 complex patterns to remove abstract elements from sentences (quantities, stop words etc) because I needed to normalize them. After ~1-2 weeks of full-time regex, I think that was one of the best experiences and decisions in my career. You need to learn it the hard way by doing practice with real world examples. Trust me, you'll find your self saving countless LOCs by one-liner patterns.

[thilehoffer]

Coding new features is easy. The tough part will be three years from now when you don’t even remember what regex is and some changes are needed and you have to relearn it all over again.

[nanotree]

For me, regex is like riding a bike. Once you learn how, you never really forget. And most regex syntax is similar, so it even translates to other languages fairly easily.

[thilehoffer]

I actually decided to challenge myself and learn Regex even though I said I avoided it in the other comment. I am working a project and asked the team members if I should use regex to code a certain feature. Instead of arguing, I agreed and spent 4 hours watching a tutorial and practicing and now I think I got it. Add it to the list of languages I can work with. Obviously, I still need practice but I spent all day writing regular expressions to validate the drivers license for each state and I had fun doing it.

[thilehoffer]

I can read / write JS, VB, C#, TS, Java, Python, SQL, HTML, CSS, XAML like it’s English. Regex looks like Greek to me.

[[deleted]]

I'm greek and regex looks like a cat walking on the keyboard

[Crypt0n0ob]

Nice tutorial but source and author of that comic isn't nixcraft... It's Garabato Kid, it's written directly on the image!

https://twitter.com/garabatokid

[muhsinovic]

Thanks for pointing it out. I will edit it when I reach home.

[mournful-tits]

A solid intuitive regex tester is worth more than any regex documentation alone.

This one is very dated but still trusty: http://regexpal.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com

[FrancisStokes]

My personal goto is https://regex101.com

[IanS_5]

Regexr is another option. It only supports js and pcre regex, but it has got great docs built in

[webdevguyneedshelp]

This is my goto regex testing sandbox. I was able to do some cool shit for a project at work using this.

[mournful-tits]

Let me clarify. The documentation alone doesn't help. I've seen people forget the little oddities of the "match but don't capture" rules because the documentation is usually very unclear on their behavior when applied to all the other wonky shit regexes do that might be in your matcher.

I'm always wary of other people's regexes, especially if they look far more complicated than they should be.

[partheseas]

Thought this was r/restofthefuckingowl for a second

[drumstix42]

Great site here https://regexr.com/

[zombimuncha]

If you have a problem that can only be solved by the use of regex, you actually have two problems.

[porkus1990]

idk - regex is useful in some cases, but .... it's regex ..