Learning RegEx? Regular Expressions
 

I have looked at a number of online tutorials but I am becoming convinced that I will need to buy a book on regex to ever understand it. Isn't this really the only way to learn it? Opinions? Thanks.

Example problem: use Linux sed or tr to capitalize the first word of a string. Gosh that sounds easy! Probably just sed 's/^./[A-Z]/' or maybe sed 's/^[a-z]/[A-Z]/'

Here are tutorials for regexps and sed.

No. There is plenty of information and tutorials, so there's no reason to waste your money on a book. You could read "man perlre" and still learn a lot.

You could use google search, you know. Try sed capitalize

Of course a book isn't the only way to learn regex. What really makes you learn is practice and a good tutorial, apart from frequent use of "info sed" for help on sed regexes, and "man 7 regex" for info on POSIX regexes.

BTW, in the info page for sed I find a page linked: http://sed.sourceforge.net/grabbag

And google for "sed one liners", it's a very well known doc with the more common sed tasks. There's also the annotated version: "sed one liners explained".

Start with the regex manpage. It will be your starting point and reference as you study regular expressions.

Understand that there are two general forms for regular expressions. The older of the two is largely considered deprecated, though it still sees use and continues to be supported for backward compatibility.

Further understand that every program which accepts regular expressions has its own rules. You must consult the program's documentation to understand its regular expression syntax.

For tutorials, I recommend reading at least two of the following:

http://www.scootersoftware.com/RegEx.html
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Regular.html
http://www.regular-expressions.info/
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ai...ps3/index.html
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...3-7/index.html

HTH

Note that it's not just about learning regex, it's also about learning sed and the other tools. I learned quite a bit from the sedfaq, including how to capitalize a string.

http://sed.sourceforge.net/sedfaq.html

But yeah, in the end it just comes down to practice and experience. It takes time to learn anything complex, and regex is certainly complex. Just keep at it.

And while "all the info" is out there and comprehensive, it's not always
easy to understand. I find no harm in buying a book, and happily recommend
Jeffrey Friedel's "Mastering regular expressions", which is not only very
accurate and exhaustive on the subject, but also actually fun to read.



Cheers,
Tink