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Discussion on: What are some Regular Expression concepts you find hard to grok?

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pinotattari profile image
Riccardo Bernardini

I agree. I actually like regular expressions, I find that they are a very powerful tool. However, the syntax leaves somehow to desire... It is not too bad for simple stuff (e.g., regexp for identifiers, especially with POSIX extension), but when the regexp gets complex (e.g., regexp for floating point numbers...) they look like a cat walking on the keyboard.

I tried to search for a different syntax, compact as the existing, but more readable but with no result. In the end I wrote myself a "regexp building" library that proves useful for the most complex cases.

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ajcwebdev

This is awesome, thank you for sharing!