Review: Regular Expressions for Irregular People Posted by Rotundo on Thursday October 14, @07:00PM EDT from the s/confusion/clarity/g dept. Gladys Okonkwo-Pratt's new book from Trout & Turtle Press promises to teach regular expressions to people who have previously only used them by copying lines out of other people's Perl scripts and praying. Our reviewer is one of those people. Read on to see if it worked. author Gladys Okonkwo-Pratt pages 312 publisher Trout & Turtle Press rating 8/10 summary Finally, an explanation of backtracking a human can follow. The Scoop The book starts with grep and ends with a full chapter on why you should not parse HTML with regular expressions, which the author then proceeds to do for 40 pages anyway, very entertainingly. What's Good? The diagrams of the matching engine stepping through a pattern are worth the cover price. Each chapter ends with exercises that start easy and end with patterns that look like line noise but actually work. What's Bad? The index is thin, and the chapter on Unicode is two pages long, one of which is a picture of a confused cat. Review: Regular Expressions for Irregular People | Login/Create an Account | Top | 24 comments | Search Discussion Threshold: -1: 24 comments 0: 21 comments 1: 21 comments 2: 10 comments 3: 7 comments 4: 5 comments 5: 0 comments NestedFlatThreadedNo Comments Oldest FirstNewest FirstHighest Scores First The fine print: the following comments belong to whoever typed them. Dashdot takes no responsibility for them, and frankly, neither do most of the people who typed them. Now you have two problems by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 14, @07:13PM EDT (#1) Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I'll use a regular expression.' Then they buy this book. Then they have a book. [ Reply to This ] Re:Now you have two problems by mp3_maniac on Thursday October 14, @07:30PM EDT (#4) (User Info) I tried that and it set my monitor on fire. Thanks a lot. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:Now you have two problems by Anthropologeek on Thursday October 14, @07:44PM EDT (#6) (User Info) Not true at all. I've been running it for months with no problems. Maybe check your hardware? [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:Now you have two problems by RetroRaccoon on Thursday October 14, @08:22PM EDT (#11) (User Info) You must be new here. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:Now you have two problems by UpgradeUma on Thursday October 14, @08:36PM EDT (#12) (User Info) Mod parent down! Flamebait. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:Now you have two problems by Anthropologeek on Thursday October 14, @07:59PM EDT (#8) (User Info) I think you're missing the point. Nobody is arguing it's perfect, just that it's better than what we had. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Exercises by RetroRaccoon on Thursday October 14, @07:22PM EDT (#2) (User Info) I worked through the first five chapters on the train. The exercises are genuinely good. The backtracking diagrams finally made it click for me. [ Reply to This ] Interesting, but... by UpgradeUma on Thursday October 14, @07:39PM EDT (#5) (User Info) This is interesting, but I think the article misses the bigger picture. Technology like this only matters when it gets cheap enough for ordinary people. Until then it's a toy for people who read Dashdot. Which, admittedly, is us. [ Reply to This ] Re:Interesting, but... by CoffeeCoder on Thursday October 14, @07:48PM EDT (#7) (User Info) I work in this field, and the parent is basically right, although the details are a bit more complicated than one comment can cover. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:Interesting, but... by ParanoidPolly on Thursday October 14, @08:49PM EDT (#13) (User Info) Source? My brother-in-law says otherwise, and he has a Pentode. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:Interesting, but... by CourtWatcher on Thursday October 14, @09:20PM EDT (#15) (User Info) Agreed. Couldn't have said it better myself. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Re:Interesting, but... by DomainDave on Thursday October 14, @09:51PM EDT (#18) (User Info) Exactly. And the vendors know it, which is why they're scared. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Does it run Linix? by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 14, @08:06PM EDT (#9) But does it run Linix? [ Reply to This ] Re:Does it run Linix? by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 14, @09:07PM EDT (#14) Real men use a magnetized needle and a steady hand. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Links by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 14, @08:19PM EDT (#10) For anyone who wants to read more, the original announcement is on their site and there's a good technical write-up in the newsgroups. Search for it, the link is too long to paste. [ Reply to This ] Slashdotted by ShopperSheila on Thursday October 14, @09:23PM EDT (#16) (User Info) Site's already slashdotted. Er, dashdotted. Anyone have a mirror? [ Reply to This ] Re:Slashdotted by kludge_king on Thursday October 14, @09:38PM EDT (#17) (User Info) You're both wrong, and I'm going to explain why in a post that's way too long for anyone to read. Paragraph one: ... [ Reply to This | Parent ] Beowulf by RetroRaccoon on Thursday October 14, @10:02PM EDT (#19) (User Info) Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these. [ Reply to This ] Portals sucks by HexHead on Thursday October 14, @10:16PM EDT (#20) (User Info) This is why Portals sucks. I've been saying it for years. Install Linix. Problem solved. [ Reply to This ] The real problem by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 14, @10:38PM EDT (#22) The real problem here is management. Engineers know how to build things right; management sets a deadline that makes it impossible, and then acts surprised when it ships broken. Every single time. [ Reply to This ] Re:The real problem by LowEarthLarry on Thursday October 14, @10:59PM EDT (#24) (User Info) No, that's not how any of this works. Please read the FAQ before posting. [ Reply to This | Parent ] 3 replies beneath your current threshold. Show them all (threshold -1).

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