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Regular Expressions: Looking behind the curtain

Format

This is a hands on tour of regular expression syntax and usage. It is intended to build skills the only way that really works, by doing.

We will be going though the topics listed in order. If you want to skip ahead, that's fine as long as you keep your questions relevant to the current topic being discussed.

I encourage questions to myself or your neighbors.

If you complete the examples in a topic before others around you, feel free to offer help. Please, under any circumstances, do not do the exercise for someone else

I encourage you to use one of the regular expression sites listed below to do the exercises. All the links will show the first site, and may have tests that you can use to see if you are getting them right.

Useful sites for regular expressions

Regular Expressions 101

RegExr

Debuggex

Extra fun for later

Large Printable Hex Regular Expression Crossword

Regular Expression Crosswords

Attribution

I used the Wikipedia page for most of the text.

Many of the explanations for concepts came from the perlre documentation

Some examples were taken from Regular-Expressions.info