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If you’re a programmer new to regular expressions, this easy-to-follow guide is a great place to start. You’ll learn the fundamentals step-by-step with the help of numerous examples, discovering first-hand how to match, extract, and transform text by matching specific words, characters, and patterns. Regular expressions are an essential part of a programmer’s toolkit, available in various Unix utlilities as well as programming languages such as Perl, Java, JavaScript, and C#. When you’ve finished this book, you’ll be familiar with the most commonly used syntax in regular expressions, and you’ll understand how using them will save you considerable time. Discover what regular expressions are and how they work Learn many of the differences between regular expressions used with command-line tools and in various programming languages Apply simple methods for finding patterns in text, including digits, letters, Unicode characters, and string literals Learn how to use zero-width assertions and lookarounds Work with groups, backreferences, character classes, and quantifiers Use regular expressions to mark up plain text with HTML5 About the Author Michael Fitzgerald describes Ruby as "my favorite language so far" and is working regularly with Ruby and the Rails framework. He has written over 150 Ruby programs for testing and demonstration, and has been developing a library of sample Ruby code. He is the author of Learning XSLT and XML Hacks, and co-author on the XML Pocket Reference. Table Of Contents Chapter 1 What Is a Regular Expression? Getting Started with Regexpal Matching a North American Phone Number Matching Digits with a Character Class Using a Character Shorthand Matching Any Character Capturing Groups and Back References Using Quantifiers Quoting Literals A Sample of Applications What You Learned in Chapter 1 Technical Notes Chapter 2 Simple Pattern Matching Matching String Literals Matching Digits Matching Non-Digits Matching Word and Non-Word Characters Matching Whitespace Matching Any Character, Once Again Marking Up the Text What You Learned in Chapter 2 Technical Notes Chapter 3 Boundaries The Beginning and End of a Line Word and Non-word Boundaries Other Anchors Quoting a Group of Characters as Literals Adding Tags What You Learned in Chapter 3 Technical Notes Chapter 4 Alternation, Groups, and Back references Alternation Subpatterns Capturing Groups and Backreferences Non-Capturing Groups What You Learned in Chapter 4 Technical Notes Chapter 5 Character Classes Negated Character Classes Union and Difference POSIX Character Classes What You Learned in Chapter 5 Technical Notes Chapter 6 Matching Unicode and Other Characters Matching a Unicode Character Matching Characters with Octal Numbers Matching Unicode Character Properties Matching Control Characters What You Learned in Chapter 6 Technical Notes Chapter 7 Quantifiers Greedy, Lazy, and Possessive Matching with , +, and ? Matching a Specific Number of Times Lazy Quantifiers Possessive Quantifiers What You Learned in Chapter 7 Technical Notes Chapter 8 Lookarounds Positive Lookaheads Negative Lookaheads Positive Lookbehinds Negative Lookbehinds What You Learned in Chapter 8 Technical Notes Chapter 9 Marking Up a Document with HTML Matching Tags Transforming Plain Text with sed Appending Tags Transforming Plain Text with Perl What You Learned in Chapter 9 Technical Notes Chapter 10 The End of the Beginning Learning More Notable Tools, Implementations, and Libraries Matching a North American Phone Number Matching an Email Address What You Learned in Chapter 10 Appendix Regular Expression Reference Regular Expressions in QED Metacharacters Character Shorthands Whitespace Unicode Whitespace Characters Control Characters Character Properties Script Names for Character Properties POSIX Character Classes Options/Modifiers ASCII Code Chart with Regex Technical Notes Regular Expression Glossary Colophon