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Test Regular Expressions Online with RegExr
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 1:00 AM on April 14, 2008
Regular expressions are archaic-looking, extremely specific, and amazingly helpful for finding the right data, files or whatever else you need. RegEx, a free online regular expression tester, lets you hone your expression language and terms down, giving you a box to put testing text in and highlighting the words that match your query. For users of Mac OS X, Linux, or even Windows with Cygwin installed, this web-based workshop (or desktop version) is a great way to get uninhibited but real practice at file-sifting. RegEx's desktop versions require the Adobe AIR platform installed to run.
Tags: command line | search | search operators | search techniques | web applications
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
yachius
Posted 2:04 AM 14/4/08
While RegExr looks super simple for somebody new to regular expressions, I would recommend using regexlib.com which has a searchable library of user submitted regular expressions and nice tutorial and cheat sheet.
The main reason I use that site is because the regular expression tester tells you which parts of your expression matched the sample and you can select which regular expression engine to test it with. Worth a look for anybody who deals with regular expressions a lot.
yachius
parcaelum
Posted 2:17 AM 14/4/08
@yachius: aw... wish you would have told me that earlier for my assignment... :(
parcaelum
hongjun
Posted 3:13 AM 14/4/08
It's looks pretty simple!
hongjun
filmnut
Posted 3:47 AM 14/4/08
This is good. Very good.
filmnut
xboxishuge
Posted 4:49 AM 14/4/08
I get a lot of use out of this thing [www.ilovejackdaniels.com] too.
Something to watch out for with any regex test though, is that is perl-compatible regular expressions are a little different from, say, Apache mod_rewrite regular expressions.
Still, more regex is more better. There are things you just can't, or wouldn't want to, do without them.
xboxishuge
quacky
Posted 7:11 AM 14/4/08
I think another really nice regex tester and explainer is the one called Rubular. It's designed well, a snappy performer, and though it's Ruby-centric in nature, a regex is a regex.
quacky
jw0ollard
Posted 8:43 AM 14/4/08
Wow.. +1 for Rubular.
I normally just try out my RegEx in Textmate's Find dialog, but I really like the real-time aspect of Rubular. I can focus more on the code and less on hitting the Summation button, or the Prev/Next buttons. :)
jw0ollard
vreesh
Posted 3:35 PM 14/4/08
thank you !
vreesh
munk
Posted 10:44 PM 14/4/08
Great tool!
Rubular also looks great, thanks for that.
There's yet another similar tool - a mock up of the Komodo regexp tool in JS - here:
[erik.eae.net]
munk
Nakamura2828
Posted 3:21 AM 14/4/08
Did you mean 'archaic' or 'arcane'? Because while I can vouch for the latter they continue to be very useful these days. RegExr looks like it will be very useful, being that I occasionally write scripts with the sole purpose of making sure the regexp I wrote is what I wanted it to be.
Nakamura2828