Mastering Regular Expressions Book Review : Regular Expressions Explained : Poised Solutions Library

Mastering Regular Expressions Book Review

Mastering Regular Expressions

Author:: Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
Publisher:: O'Reilly
Published:: 2002
Pages:: 460

Mastering Regular Expressions

Mastering Regular Expressions Chapters

Introduction to Regular Expressions
- Solving Real Problems
- Regular Expressions as a Language
  - The Filename Analogy
  - The Language Analogy
- The Regular Expression Frame of Mind
  - If You Have Some Regular-Expression Experience
  - Searching Text Files: Egrep
- Egrep Metacharacters
  - Start and End of Line
  - Character Classes
  - Matching Any Character with Dot
  - Alternation
  - Ignoring Differences in Capitalization
  - Word Boundaries
  - In a Nutshell
  - Optional Items
  - Other Quantifier: Repetition
  - Parentheses and Backreferences
  - The Great Escape
- Expanding the Foundation
  - Linguistic Diversification
  - The Goal of a Regular Expression
  - A Few More Examples
  - Regular Expression Nomenclature
  - Improving the Status Quo
  - Summary
- Personal Glimpses
Extended Introductory Examples
- About the Examples
- Matching Text with Regular Expressions
  - Toward a More Real-World Example
  - Side Effects of a Successful Match
  - Intertwined Regular Expressions
  - Intermission
- Modifying Text with Regular Expressions
  - Example: Form Letter
  - Example: Prettifying a Stock Price
  - Automated Editing
  - A Small Mail Utility
  - Adding Commas to a Number with a Lookaround
  - Text-to-HTML Conversion
  - That Doubled-Word Thing
Overview of Regular Expression Features and Flavors
- A Casual Stroll Across the Regex Landscape
  - The Origins of Regular Expressions
  - At a Glance
- Care and Handling of Regular Expressions
  - Integrated Handling
  - Procedural and Object-Oriented Handling
  - A Search-and-Replace Example
  - Search and Replace in Other Languages
  - Care and Handling: Summary
- Strings, Character Encodings and Modes
  - Strings as Regular Expressions
  - Character-Encoding Issues
  - Regex Modes and Match Modes
- Common Metacharacters and Features
  - Character Representations
  - Character Classes and Class-Like Constructs
  - Anchors and Other 'Zero-Width Assertions'
  - Comments and Mode Modifiers
  - Grouping, Capturing, Conditionals and Control
- Guide to the Advanced Chapters
The Mechanics of Expression Processing
- Start Your Engines!
- Match Basics
- Regex-Directed Versus Text-Directed
- Backtracking
- More About Greediness and Backtracking
- NFA, DFA and POSIX
  - The Longest-Leftmost
  - POSIX and the Longest-Leftmost Rule
  - Speed and Efficiency
  - Summary: NFA and DFA in Comparison
- Summary
Practical Regex Techniques
- Regex Balancing Act
- A Few Short Examples
  - Continuing with Continuation Lines
  - Matching an IP Address
  - Working with Filenames
  - Matching Balanced Sets of Parentheses
  - Watching Out for Unwanted Matches
  - Matching Delimited Text
  - Knowing Your Data and Making Assumptions
  - Stripping Leading and Trailing Whitespace
- HTML-Related Examples
  - Matching an HTML Tag
  - Matching an HTML Link
  - Examining an HTTP URL
  - Validating a Hostname
  - Plucking Out a URL in the Real World
- Extended Examples
  - Keeping in Sync with Your Data
  - Parsing CSV Files
Crafting an Efficient Expression
- A Sobering Example
  - A Simple Change - Placing Your Best Foot Forward
  - Efficiency Verses Correctness
  - Advancing Further - Localizing the Greediness
  - Reality Check
- A Global View of Backtracking
  - More Work for POSIX NFA
  - Work Required During a Non-Match
  - Being More Specific
  - Alternation Can be Expensive
- Benchmarking
  - Know What You're Measuring
  - Benchmarking with Java
  - Benchmarking with VB.NET
  - Benchmarking with Python
  - Benchmarking with Ruby
  - Benchmarking with Tcl
- Common Optimizations
  - No Free Lunch
  - Everyone's Lunch is Different
  - The Mechanics of Regex Application
  - Pre-Application Optimizations
  - Optimizations with the Transmission
  - Optimizations of the Regex Itself
- Techniques for Faster Expressions
  - Common Sense Techniques
  - Expose Literal Text
  - Expose Anchors
  - Lazy Versus Greedy: Be Specific
  - Split Into Multiple Regular Expressions
  - Mimic Initial-Character Discrimination
  - Use Atomic Grouping and Possessive Quantifiers
  - Lead the Engine to a Match
- Unrolling the Loop
  - Method 1: Building a Regex From Past Experiences
  - The Real 'Unrolling-the-Loop' Pattern
  - Method 2: A Top-Down View
  - Method 3: An Internet Hostname
  - Observations
  - Using Atomic Grouping and Possessive Quantifiers
  - Short Unrolling Examples
  - Unrolling C Comments
- The Freeflowing Regex
  - A Helping Hand to Guide the Match
  - A Well Guided Regex is a Fast Regex
  - Wrapup
- In Summary: Think!
Perl
- Regular Expressions as a Language Component
  - Perl's Greatest Strength
  - Perl's Greatest Weakness
- Perl's Regex Flavor
  - Regex Operands and Regex Literals
  - How Regex Literals are Parsed
  - Regex Modifiers
- Regex-Related Perlisms
  - Expression Context
  - Dynamic Scope and Regex Match Effects
  - Special Variables Modified by a Match
- The qr/.../ Operator and Regex Objects
  - Building and Using Regex Objects
  - Viewing Regex Objects
  - Using Regex Objects for Efficiency
- The Match Operator
  - Match's Regex Operand
  - Specifying the Match Target Operand
  - Different Uses of the Match Operator
  - Iterative Matching: Scalar Context, with /g
  - The Match Operator's Environmental Relations
- The Substitution Operator
  - The Replacement Operand
  - The /e Modifier
  - Context and Return Value
- The Split Operator
  - Basic Split
  - Returning Empty Elements
  - Split's Special Regex Operands
  - Split's Match Operand with Capturing Parentheses
- Fun with Perl Enhancements
  - Using a Dynamic Regex to Match Nested Pairs
  - Using the Embedded-Code Construct
  - using local in an Embedded-Code Construct
  - A Warning About Embedded Code and my Variables
  - Matching Nested Constructs with Embedded Code
  - Overloading Regex Literals
  - Problems with Regex-Literal Overloading
  - Mimicking Named Capture
- Perl Efficiency Issues
  - 'There's More than One Way to Do it'
  - Regex Compilation, the /o Modifier, qr/.../ and Efficiency
  - Understanding the 'Pre-Match' Copy
  - The Study function
  - Benchmarking
  - Regex Debugging Information
- Final Comments
Java
- Judging a Regex Package
  - Technical Issues
  - Social and Political Issues
- Object Models
  - A Few Abstract Object Models
  - Growing Complexity
- Packages, Packages, Packages
  - Why So Many 'Perl5' Flavors
  - Lies, Damn Lies, and Benchmarks
  - Recommendations
- Sun's Regex Package
  - Regex Flavour
  - using java.util.regex
  - The Pattern.compile() Factory
  - The Matcher Object
  - Other Pattern Methods
- A Quick Look at Jakarta-ORO
  - ORO's Perl5Util
  - A Mini Perl5Util Reference
  - Using ORO's Underlying Classes
.NET
- .NET's Regex Flavor
  - Additional Comments on the Flavor
- Using .NET Regular Expressions
  - Regex Quickstart
  - Package Overview
  - Core Object Overview
  - Core Object Details
  - Static Convenience Functions
  - Support Functions
  - Advanced .Net
- Core Object Details
  - Creating Regex Objects
  - Using Regex Objects
  - Using Match Objects
  - using Group Objects
- Static 'Convenience' Functions
  - Regex Caching
- Support Functions
- Advanced .NET
  - Regex Assemblies
  - Matching Nested Constructs
  - Capture Objects