Regex For Complete Noobs

By Thomas Rayner

Elevator Pitch

Regular expressions are sequences of characters that define a search pattern, mainly for use in pattern matching with strings, not as some people would have you believe, devil code written by witchcraft practitioners. If you don’t know basic regex, you’re missing out. Get some knowledge in you!

Description

If you have ever had to comb through a log or unformatted user input, you know why regex is an important skill. You can try splitting and replacing and joining and trimming strings to try to get stuff out of them, but more often than not, a nice clean regular expression is the tool that’s best for the job. Folks need to quit avoiding regex like it’s an alien that’s here to eat your brain, and embrace the unmatched power that it brings to string manipulation.

Notes

Ok, I know Mark Minasi did a regex for beginners talk last year, but mine is totally different and a decent percentage of Summit attendees each year are new. I’ve given this session once before and afterwards, I was swamped with gratitude and praise (that sounds arrogant, but I just meant to share that people appreciated this session, and that I made regex - an intimidating concept for many - accessible and inviting).