expressions

Keeping up with what words are in and out isn't hard. Yet, with all the other more important things on our to-do list, it doesn't get remembered easily.

Regular expressions are hard to write, hard to read, and hard to maintain. Plus, they are often wrong, matching unexpected text and missing valid text. The problem stems from the power and expressiveness of regular expressions. Each metacharacter packs power and nuance, making code impossible to decipher without resorting to mental gymnastics.

A Vision The job given me by the Almighty Programmer was gatekeeper. The clouds parted below me and I could see a long sinewy line of expressions marching toward me in single file. Some looked like dates, others like digits and some (to be honest) looked like gibberish. One by one, they would try to get past me but I know no fear - for I am the RegularExpressionValidator.

This page covers the very basics of understanding, creating and using regular expressions ('regexes') in Perl.

I recently had the problem of trying to search for a regular expression in a database field. There is no version of SQL Server that supports regular expressions natively, but I discovered a way to add all sorts of regular expression goodness to your T-SQL applications. In order to use regular expressions easily, we can use a User Defined Function to help us out and abstract the work for us.