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Discussion on: My RegExp nightmare

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Rob Hoelz

I remember feeling the same way when I was learning Perl - I was tempted to skip over the chapter on regexes, thinking I wouldn't use them. I didn't give in to that temptation; I buckled down and learned them.

And I am so glad I did!

I tend not to use regexes in long-lived code, but I use them all the time on the command line for adhoc data processing. I use them with perl oneliners to extract data, ack to search codebases, among other things. On top of this, I use patterns in Vim (Vim's own little regex dialect).

My advice would be to learn the basics - regexes are a really powerful tool to have in your toolbox!