February 2001
Beginner to intermediate
448 pages
9h 2m
English
Many UNIX programs, languages, editors, and shells use regular expressions. They are a way of describing a set of strings through pattern-matching. When you use the expression, “That's cool,” you are not presenting literal information on the temperature of the object. You probably are trying to indicate that the object is good, or interesting, or well done, or acceptable, or neat, or…cool.
Similarly, expressions are used by the shell and by utilities to represent an aggregate of string information in a succinct manner.
This chapter teaches you the following:
The value of regular expressions in scripts
How to represent groups of characters through character classes
How to use special pattern-matching characters
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