Discussion on: A Visual Guide to Regular Expression

[EECOLOR]

Good write! When I explain regular expressions I tend to mention the following points:

• Once you learn regular expressions, please remember that you barely ever need them. Things tend to look like regex nails ;-)
• If your regular expression starts to look back at you in an intimidating fashion, you are probably better off using something else.
• You should not use a regular expression for things that involve nesting (code, html, ...)

I also point people towards RegExr, especially the 'Tests' tab is amazing, make sure you also write tests for the things you do not want to match.

[Doug]

The greatest danger using regular expressions is a global search and replace. I can't tell you how many times I've seen inadvertent changes cause down stream problems.

[Amit Chaudhary]

Great to know. I'll update the post with a link to Regexer.