Amazon.co.uk
Regular expressions--it sounds fairly ordinary in a regular sort of way, so therefore it must be very simple and very straightforward, right? Not quite.
The simple name hides an incredible amount of power when handling textual data with scripting languages such as Perl, Python and awk and more and the programmer that can master regular expressions can master just about anything.
From the off it's necessary to congratulate author Jeffrey Friedl on doing a superb job of asking what can be a very complex subject and breaking it down into digestible chunks that almost anyone can understand.
From the basics of character and pattern matching through to the recognition of complex string patterns and multiple character replacements to "greedy" metacharacters and how to curb their appetite, this is about as comprehensive as it gets.
With a handful of latter chapters devoted to the differences between scripting languages and the way in which they deal with regular expressions and so many examples it'll make your eyes water there's something here for everyone.
So, if you can examine a string like this "(\\.|[^"\\])*" and know what it does and how it does it there's plenty of reference material in here for those odd moments when you need a refresher. If, however, you've no idea what the above means, and you need the ability to handle textual data, buy this book. Now!
Amazon.com
Regular expressions are a central element of UNIX utilities like egrep and programming languages such as Perl. But whether you're a UNIX user or not, you can benefit from a better understanding of regular expressions since they work with applications ranging from validating data-entry fields to manipulating information in multimegabyte text files.
Mastering Regular Expressions quickly covers the basics of regular-expression syntax, then delves into the mechanics of expression-processing, common pitfalls, performance issues, and implementation-specific differences. Written in an engaging style and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems,
Mastering Regular Expressions offers a wealth information that you can put to immediate use.