Coding 101

Jun 26th 2014

Coding 101 23

Perl: RegEx Search and Replace

Reviewing regular expressions in Perl.

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Category: Help & How To

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Ivory Tower

Let's talk about Regular Expressions

  • In the previous episode, we brushed past Regular Expressions ... OUR BAD!

Defn: At its simplest, A "Regular Expression" or "Regex" is a type of pattern-matching that can be used in searches or find and replace operations.

  • In a Regex, each character of the string is its own metacharacter that can be combined with other metacharacters to identify patterns and even context
  • Regular Expressions are used in most modern languages, and figure prominently into modern search engines. Perl is the standard-bearer for Regular Expressions in .NET, Java, Ruby and others

WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?!?!?!

  • Quite simply... REGEX allows you to find, match and replace patters within any data set.
  • It lets you search NOT just complete strings, but parts of strings.
    • You can then replace those strings, or parts of strings with other strings. They're useful to parse files and provide a powerful search and replace tool.

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