Should I avoid using regex?
When Not to Use Regex Regular expressions can be a good tool, but if you try apply them to every situation, you’ll be in for a world of hurt and confusion down the line. Regex isn’t suited to parse HTML because HTML isn’t a regular language. Regex probably won’t be the tool to reach for when parsing source code.
When should I use regex?
Regular expressions are useful in search and replace operations. The typical use case is to look for a sub-string that matches a pattern and replace it with something else. Most APIs using regular expressions allow you to reference capture groups from the search pattern in the replacement string.
Why is regex so hard?
Density. Regular expressions are dense. This makes them hard to read, but not in proportion to the information they carry. Certainly 100 characters of regular expression syntax is harder to read than 100 consecutive characters of ordinary prose or 100 characters of C code.
Is regex an important skill?
Regular expressions, also called regex, are very powerful programming tools that are used for a variety of purposes such as feature extraction from text, string replacement and other string manipulations. For someone to become a master at text analytics, being proficient with regular expressions is a must-have skill.
Is using RegEx a good practice?
Yes – regular expressions work very well for input validation. However, often times it’s a very good idea to abstract these things away as much as possible as other methods – or even sometimes special validator objects.
Why you should not parse HTML with RegEx?
You can’t reliably parse HTML with regexes. Regular expressions are a tool that is insufficiently sophisticated to understand the constructs employed by HTML. HTML is not a regular language and hence cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Regex queries are not equipped to break down HTML into its meaningful parts.
Should you learn regex?
Learn once, write anywhere Regular expressions can be used in virtually any programming language. A knowledge of regex is very useful for validating user input, interacting with the Unix shell, searching/refactoring code in your favorite text editor, performing database text searches, and lots more.
What is regex magic?
RegexMagic makes creating regular expressions easier than ever. While other regex tools such as RegexBuddy merely make it easier to work with regular expressions, with RegexMagic you don’t have to deal with the regular expression syntax at all. RegexMagic generates complete regular expressions to your specifications.