Video Description
The regular expression (regex) has been around for over 60 years and it's still poorly understood—and incorrectly used—by most developers. Why? Mainly because regexes are rarely taught to developers; they’re just left to "pick them up" as they go along. This means most developers don't know what regexes do, how they work, how to use them, how to optimize them, or how to maintain them. In this course, regex expert Damian Conway changes this equation. He explains regexes in detail and shows you the power of these amazing and efficient tools. Bonus: learners will receive a 12-page cheat-sheet for download that shows all major regex constructs across six dialects.
- Learn how to think about regexes and stop being confused, confounded, or terrified by them
- Master what each regex component does and the problems it can solve
- Discover the pitfalls of each regex component and learn how to avoid these mistakes
- Learn why regexes run slowly and how to optimize them (sometimes by orders of magnitude)
- Explore ways to decompose and refactor a regex
- Gain experience building complex regexes that work
Dr. Damian Conway is a widely sought-after speaker, trainer, and author. He runs Thoughtstream, an international IT training company serving clients throughout Australasia, North America, and Europe; he designed the regex mechanism for Perl 6; and he's written multiple O'Reilly titles, including Modern Perl Best Practices and Mastering VIM.
Table of Contents
- Regexes—Welcome to The Course 00:00:59
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How Regexes Work
- What Are Regexes? 00:01:28
- The Big Lie about Regexes 00:01:35
- The Truth about Regexes 00:03:35
- The Language(s) of Regexes 00:06:52
- How Regexes Are Implemented 00:10:53
- Performance Versus Power with Regexes 00:14:13
- What Will My Regex Match? 00:08:11
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How to Build a Regex
- The Regex Instruction Set 00:05:31
- Building Regexes—Metasyntax 00:24:34
- Building Regexes—Regex Control Structures 00:30:55
- Building Regexes—Looping, Unlooping, Snooping, and Swooping 00:23:40
- Building Regexes—Extracting Substrings 00:17:53
- Building Regexes—Assertions 00:05:10
- Building Regexes—Context and Boundaries 00:16:33
- Building Regexes—Match Limiting 00:06:56
- Building Regexes—Rematching Captures 00:11:40
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How to Build Better Regexes
- Correct Regexes—Extended Formatting 00:13:36
- Correct Regexes—Named Captures 00:18:49
- Correct Regexes—Pattern (De)composition 00:09:49
- Efficient Regexes—What's Taking So Long? 00:06:53
- Efficient Regexes—Loop Optimization 00:12:40
- Efficient Regexes—Eliminating Backtracking in Loops 00:13:14
- Efficient Regexes—Eliminating Backtracking in Alternations 00:12:01
- Efficient Regexes—Refactoring for Better Performance 00:04:53
- Building Powerful Regexes 00:25:43
- How to Build Better Regexes—Conclusion 00:02:01