RegExr • Hacker News Board

Re: RegExr

#21

Post by 1f60c » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

goerz wrote: post #14

The problem I have with all of these regex websites and tools is that they usually only use the regex dialect of whatever language they’re written in. Or at best, a very incomplete list of dialects. Subtle differences between dialects matter a lot. Personally, I would need at least Perl, Python, GNU utils (with and without -E), BSD utils (or whatever comes with macOS, again with and without-E), and vim with the vario…

Sounds like a fun side project :D

Re: RegExr

#22

Post by dang » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

Posted many times but the large threads are:

2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13599952

2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9581225

2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7537189

Already in 2008 the comments were listing others: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=277657

Re: RegExr

#23

Post by jedberg » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

Why is there a sudden explosion of posts about regex in the last few days? Did something newsworthy happen that I missed, or is it more of a "I saw the post last week and then found this cool related thing" bandwagon effect?

Re: RegExr

#24

Post by earenndil » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

tabtab wrote: post #19

I find RegEx's a bit cryptic. Sure, with enough practice one can read them, but I'd like an alternative that can easily break out chunks as named units. One can then reference the named units to compose new named units. Divide-and-Conquer. I'd like to see experiments in alternatives that provide this. It could help do for RegEx's what SQL's WITH statement did for long SQL statements. Backus–Naur Form could act as a s…

Look at perl6 grammars.

Re: RegExr

#25

Post by KenanSulayman » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

Something I can recommend to both experienced and "new developers" alike is https://regexper.com.

It generates clear graphs from regular expressions making immediately clear what they do.

Re: RegExr

#26

Post by tabtab » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

earenndil wrote: post #24

tabtab wrote: post #19

I find RegEx's a bit cryptic. Sure, with enough practice one can read them, but I'd like an alternative that can easily break out chunks as named units. One can then reference the named units to compose new named units. Divide-and-Conquer. I'd like to see experiments in alternatives that provide this. It could help do for RegEx's what SQL's WITH statement did for long SQL statements. Backus–Naur Form could act as a s…

Look at perl6 grammars.

It looks extensive, but perhaps may be overkill for a common regex alternative. Thanks for the tip, though. A standard or semi-standard would have to start simple.

Re: RegExr

#27

Post by lpellis » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:12 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #17

My favorite is https://regex101.com/ But I've found all of the following to be useful: http://regexone.com/ http://www.regexpal.com/ http://www.rexegg.com/ http://regexr.com/ https://www.debuggex.com/ https://regexper.com/ https://www.regular-expressions.info/ http://www.cheatography.com/davechild/cheat-sheets/regular-e... http://eloquentjavascript.net/09_regexp.html http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/essential-…

And for python this one is nice: https://pythex.org/

Re: RegExr

#28

Post by LameRubberDucky » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:22 PM UTC

goerz wrote: post #14

The problem I have with all of these regex websites and tools is that they usually only use the regex dialect of whatever language they’re written in. Or at best, a very incomplete list of dialects. Subtle differences between dialects matter a lot. Personally, I would need at least Perl, Python, GNU utils (with and without -E), BSD utils (or whatever comes with macOS, again with and without-E), and vim with the vario…

If you were on Windows, you could try RegexBuddy. It supports regex dialects for: .NET, Boost (C++), Delphi, Groovy, Oracle Database, PowerShell, R, std::regex, VB6, wxWidgets, C#, MySQL, PHP, PostgreSQL, VBScript, Java, Perl, PCRE, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Tcl ARE, POSIX BRE, POSIX ERE, GNU BRE, GNU ERE, XML Schema, and XPath. It will even generate code snippets for you based on the regex you create with the tool. It can also convert between these dialects and lets you know if features in the target dialect are not available.

I am not associated with this company in any way, just a long time user.

Re: RegExr

#29

Post by boomskats » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:22 PM UTC

regex101.com lets me have client-side validation without requiring a network connection, so it's way more useful to me than regexr (although the regexr UI is nice and I like their github repo).

Re: RegExr

#30

Post by btilly » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

tabtab wrote: post #19

I find RegEx's a bit cryptic. Sure, with enough practice one can read them, but I'd like an alternative that can easily break out chunks as named units. One can then reference the named units to compose new named units. Divide-and-Conquer. I'd like to see experiments in alternatives that provide this. It could help do for RegEx's what SQL's WITH statement did for long SQL statements. Backus–Naur Form could act as a s…

It sounds like you would like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNOBOL.

Though if you had to do enough work with text, my bet is that you'd eventually figure out why regexes won. They are simple, straightforward, and just enough to tackle the occasional matching problem on your way to doing something else.