RegExr

doesnt support POSIX character classes.

this should be preferred over `a-z` as the latter relies on users locale.

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This is nice, but my go to tool is: https://www.debuggex.com/

Not only does it tell you what everything means, but it visually displays it in a way that just makes sense.

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-guide-to-r...

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/introduction-to-adva...

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guid...

http://codylindley.com/techpro/2013_05_14__javascript-regula...

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 starting point, but it needs some syntactic adjustments to make it more compact and practical, in my opinion. Partial example:

     Side = VarFunc + Segment*;
     Segment = 
         ":" + Varfunc
      | (":" + VarFunc)[0..1] + "{" + "}"
      | (":" + Varfunc)[0..1] + "{" + Base + (";" + Base)* + "}";
     Letter = ('a'..'z'|'A'..'Z');
     ForbiddenChar = $anyChr("/?#%");
     /*
     Legend:
       [x..y] = quantity of repeats (substitute letters with integers)
       [0..n] = zero, one, or multiple
       * = shorthand for [0..n]
       | = "or"
       + = concatenation, ignores white-space
       ++ = concatenation, excludes white space
       +w+ = concatenation, must have white-space between
       'x'..'y' = character falls within range
       $x() = special function or constant, where "x" is a name.
     */