Show HN: Regex Cheatsheet

#1

Post by geongeorgek » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 10:32 AM UTC

Re: Show HN: Regex Cheatsheet

#2

Post by geongeorgek » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 10:34 AM UTC

I used to spend hours trying to craft the perfect expression for my scraping projects not realizing that I don't really know regex.

This tool is a cheat sheet that also explains the commonly used expressions so that you understand it.

- There is a visual representation of the regular expression (thanks to regexpr)

- The application shows matching strings which you can play around

- Expressions can be edited and these are instantly validated

Re: Show HN: Regex Cheatsheet

#3

Post by __tk__ » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

I'm loving the graphs which for the first time in years are giving me an idea of what an expression is actually doing. Just because the visualization is kept in a form that is easy to understand with a programming background but can also be translated to the expression itself in a straightforward manner.

Re: Show HN: Regex Cheatsheet

#4

Post by StavrosK » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

I love regex and have no trouble reading them, but still love this tool, great job. I especially like the railroad diagrams, for those cases where I brainfarted on a regex and it's doing something other than what I intended. Thanks for this.

Re: Show HN: Regex Cheatsheet

#5

Post by geongeorgek » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #4

I love regex and have no trouble reading them, but still love this tool, great job. I especially like the railroad diagrams, for those cases where I brainfarted on a regex and it's doing something other than what I intended. Thanks for this.

I'm glad you like the tool <3 It will have a lot more content soon :)

Re: Show HN: Regex Cheatsheet

#6

Post by geongeorgek » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

__tk__ wrote: post #3

I'm loving the graphs which for the first time in years are giving me an idea of what an expression is actually doing. Just because the visualization is kept in a form that is easy to understand with a programming background but can also be translated to the expression itself in a straightforward manner.

I can't take credit for the visualizations although implementing it was a pain in the ass. It was originally created by: https://regexper.com/

Re: Show HN: Regex Cheatsheet

#7

Post by Glench » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 1:39 PM UTC

Plug for Verbal Expressions (no affiliation), which has an alternate way of compiling more human-readable regexes for a dozen languages: http://verbalexpressions.github.io/

Re: Show HN: Regex Cheatsheet

#8

Post by geongeorgek » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC

Glench wrote: post #7

Plug for Verbal Expressions (no affiliation), which has an alternate way of compiling more human-readable regexes for a dozen languages: http://verbalexpressions.github.io/

This looks nice

Re: Show HN: Regex Cheatsheet

#9

Post by mimixco » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

This is awesome! Thank you! I hate regex, too, but I love your inline railroad diagramming tool.

Re: Show HN: Regex Cheatsheet

#10

Post by certifiedloud » Fri, Jan 31, 2020, 1:47 PM UTC

Glench wrote: post #7

Plug for Verbal Expressions (no affiliation), which has an alternate way of compiling more human-readable regexes for a dozen languages: http://verbalexpressions.github.io/

A CLI version of this would be pretty useful to me.