Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes

Regular expressions and the regular expression language have been around for many years. Regular expression experts have long been armed with an incredibly powerful tool, one that can be used to perform all sorts of powerful text processing and manipulation in just about every language and on every platform.

That's the good news. The bad news is that for too long, regular expressions have been the exclusive property of only the most tech savvy. Most of us do not fully understand what regular expressions do and what problems they solve. And those who have braved them find regular expression syntax to be unintuitive, and even convoluted at times. That's sad, because the truth is that regular expressions are nowhere near as complex as they appear to be at first glance. All it takes is a clear understanding of the problem being solved and how to leverage regular expressions so as to solve them.

Part of the problem is the scarcity of quality content on the subject. The few books on regular expressions (and indeed, most of the Web sites boasting regular expression tutorials) tend to concentrate on the syntax, defining what { does and how + differs from *. But that is the easy part; there are not that many special characters in the regular expression language. The tricky part is understanding how they should be used so as to solve real-world problems. If you need to get up and running quickly using regular expressions, you'll find yourself torn between having too little information to be productive and having too much information to know where to begin.

And that is where this book comes in. Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes will teach you the regular expressions that you really need to know, starting with simple text matches and working up to more complex topics, including the use of backreferences, conditional evaluation, and look-ahead processing. You'll learn what you can use, and you'll learn it methodically, systematically, and simply by using clear and practical examples and solving real problems - all in lessons that will each take 10 minutes or less to complete.

To determine if this book is for you, answer these questions: Are you new to regular expressions? Do you want to quickly learn how to get the most out of the regular expression language? Do you want to gain an edge by learning to solve real problems using one of the most powerful (and least understood) tools available to you? Do you build Web applications and crave more sophisticated form and text processing? Are you are a developer (using Perl, ASP, Visual Basic, .NET, C#, Java, JSP, PHP, ColdFusion, and many other languages) and want to learn how to use regular expressions within your own application development? Do you want to be productive quickly and easily in regular expressions without having to call someone for help? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you'll find this little book to be exactly what you've been looking for.

正則表達式和正則表達式語言已經存在多年了。長期以來，正則表達式專家一直擁有一個非常強大的工具，可以在幾乎所有語言和平台上執行各種強大的文本處理和操作。這是好消息。壞消息是，長期以來，正則表達式一直是只有最懂技術的人才能使用的專利。我們大多數人並不完全理解正則表達式的功能和解決的問題。而那些勇敢嘗試的人發現，正則表達式的語法有時候很難理解，甚至很複雜。這很可惜，因為事實上，正則表達式並不像乍一看那麼複雜。只需要清楚理解要解決的問題以及如何運用正則表達式來解決問題。問題的一部分是關於這個主題的優質內容的稀缺性。少數關於正則表達式的書籍（實際上，大多數宣稱有正則表達式教程的網站）往往集中在語法上，定義了{做什麼，+和*有什麼不同。但這只是容易的部分；正則表達式語言中並沒有那麼多特殊字符。困難的部分是理解如何使用它們來解決現實世界的問題。如果你需要快速上手使用正則表達式，你會發現自己在生產力上有太少的信息，或者有太多的信息而不知道從何處開始。這就是這本書的用處所在。《Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes》將教你真正需要了解的正則表達式，從簡單的文本匹配開始，逐步深入更複雜的主題，包括使用反向引用、條件評估和前瞻處理。你將學習到可以使用的內容，並通過清晰實用的例子和解決實際問題的方式，以有系統、有方法地學習，每個課程只需花費不到10分鐘的時間。要確定這本書是否適合你，請回答以下問題：你是否對正則表達式感到陌生？你是否想快速學習如何充分利用正則表達式語言？你是否想通過學習使用一個最強大（且最不被理解）的工具來解決現實問題，獲得優勢？你是否構建網絡應用程序並渴望更複雜的表單和文本處理？你是否是一個開發人員（使用Perl、ASP、Visual Basic、.NET、C＃、Java、JSP、PHP、ColdFusion和許多其他語言），並想學習如何在自己的應用程序開發中使用正則表達式？你是否想在使用正則表達式時快速、輕鬆地提高生產力，而不需要求助他人？如果你對這些問題的任何一個回答是肯定的，你會發現這本小書正是你一直在尋找的。