Timeline for Is it a must for every programmer to learn regular expressions? [closed]
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
57 events
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| S Jul 8 at 4:02 | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Too wordy. Made question more concise.
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| Apr 1 at 16:32 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jul 8 at 4:02 | |||||
| Apr 12, 2017 at 7:31 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/
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| Mar 30, 2016 at 6:02 | review | Reopen votes | |||
| Apr 2, 2016 at 21:21 | |||||
| Mar 8, 2016 at 18:44 | review | Reopen votes | |||
| Mar 12, 2016 at 21:20 | |||||
| Feb 21, 2016 at 14:02 | history | closed |
gnat user40980 Bart van Ingen Schenau Ixrec enderland |
Not suitable for this site | |
| Feb 19, 2016 at 22:34 | review | Close votes | |||
| Feb 21, 2016 at 14:02 | |||||
| Aug 17, 2012 at 22:53 | comment | added | user1249 | The most important thing with regular expressions is to know what they can't do - i.e. count - and that this results in that there are some things you simply cannot do with regular expressions. Like XML. | |
| Aug 17, 2012 at 22:23 | answer | added | Jonathan Henson | timeline score: 0 | |
| Aug 17, 2012 at 21:43 | review | Close votes | |||
| Aug 25, 2012 at 3:03 | |||||
| Aug 16, 2012 at 21:16 | answer | added | Weston C | timeline score: 0 | |
| Mar 26, 2012 at 16:22 | vote | accept | user | ||
| Feb 13, 2012 at 19:58 | comment | added | Ben Lee | @Brendan, I think the "people get used to regex and decide to use it for everything" is a popular myth among programmers that is actually not a very common occurrence at all. Yes, people will use regexes in place of faster string searching funtions when the regexes are clearer and speed is utterly irrelevant. I've very rarely seen over-zealous regex use in the wild. This "regex-craze" is a boogieman (and you're using it at as a straw man argument too). | |
| Feb 10, 2012 at 16:32 | answer | added | TheDPQ | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 10, 2012 at 5:47 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/167847084958027776 | ||
| Feb 9, 2012 at 13:29 | comment | added | Benedict | Of relevance: thedailywtf.com/Articles/SQL-MUGging.aspx | |
| Feb 9, 2012 at 13:02 | comment | added | Polynomial | @Brendan - Absolutely agree, and that problem is not confined to regex. I often see people starting to use NoSQL solutions like Redis to speed up problems that are suitable for NoSQL, but then going totally off the rails and transforming their entire (highly relational) database backend into a horrendous map of key/value pairs. Bleargh. | |
| Feb 9, 2012 at 12:57 | comment | added | Brendan | @Polynomial: The really awesome thing is also the really scary thing - people get used to regex and decide to use it for everything; and end up with crappy code (e.g. slower regex match rather than a faster string search for simple cases) with hidden corner cases and poor error handling (e.g. "ERROR: something went wrong, but it's too hard to break up the regex that grew more and more complex as time went by, so there's no meaningful error message that says what the actually problem was"). | |
| Feb 9, 2012 at 12:21 | comment | added | Polynomial | Regex is one of those tools that you think you'll probably never use, and it looks pretty horrendous and opaque, so you ignore it. I did this for years. Eventually I started learning how to use regex, and I found it surprisingly easy. Regexes look pretty nasty to the untrained eye, but they're really only made of 3 or 4 constructs glued together. The really awesome thing is that when you do know regex, you start to see the places where you could use it to make your life a lot easier. I've often replaced functions containing 100+ lines of code with 1 or 2 regexes. | |
| Feb 9, 2012 at 12:15 | answer | added | Benedict | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 9, 2012 at 12:05 | answer | added | Den | timeline score: 2 | |
| Feb 9, 2012 at 11:11 | answer | added | Avi | timeline score: 0 | |
| Feb 9, 2012 at 7:35 | answer | added | jmoreno | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 23:33 | comment | added | wim | Oh no! The killer must have followed her on vacation! But to find them, we'd have to search through 200 MB of emails looking for something formatted like an address! It's hopeless! | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 23:07 | answer | added | Makach | timeline score: 11 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 21:31 | comment | added | jokoon | Honestly if you don't use regex functions inside your code, and if you don't work with a web interface, it's pretty useless. regex is useful in html form parsing, but even for my code or when I need something for me, I use an evolved find/replace (notepad ++ also allows regex in its find/replace), which is much more convenient. regex can be quickly sophisticated, and a regex code is not always 100% garanteed to work as expected. Text is not always the best tool. But it's still something to learn, so why not :) | |
| S Feb 8, 2012 at 20:25 | answer | added | Xyz | timeline score: 2 | |
| S Feb 8, 2012 at 20:25 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Xyz | ||
| Feb 8, 2012 at 20:24 | answer | added | emont01 | timeline score: 3 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 20:10 | answer | added | Rune FS | timeline score: 17 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 19:49 | answer | added | Karl Bielefeldt | timeline score: 8 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 19:46 | answer | added | Eugene - AmberPixels | timeline score: 0 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 18:58 | answer | added | hugomg | timeline score: 4 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 18:45 | comment | added | Jim In Texas | If you are going to program professionally you should have at least basic familiarity with regular expressions. You will encounter them. It's not necessary to become a fanatic about them the way some devs do. | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 18:41 | answer | added | John Slade | timeline score: 14 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 18:40 | comment | added | Ominus | Why wouldn't you want to learn them. Once you get "how" they work just get a cheat sheet or quick ref guide. The are immensely useful! Does a programer need to know how to type to program, no, but why would you not want to. Regexp can be learned over a couple days, at least to point of being able to use them modestly and to get to understand why they are so awesome. | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 18:29 | answer | added | Xeoncross | timeline score: 4 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 18:18 | history | edited | Jarrod Nettles | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
reorganized a bit
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| Feb 8, 2012 at 17:44 | answer | added | TheTechGuy | timeline score: 0 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 17:41 | comment | added | rlperez | To get back on topic...I think it's more important to understand parsing and how a regular expression (possibly) works. I took a class on state machines that often used string pattern matching as a basis. Very informative. Probably wouldn't hurt to read up on that sort of thing. Even if you don't know the exact regex answer you could probably spin an understanding of what you they are looking for. | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 17:26 | comment | added | user | @Oded: This is not SO. I think this type of questions are for this site | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 17:17 | comment | added | yannis | @Oded Rule: Vote to close, if you feel the question doesn't belong here. | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 17:13 | comment | added | Oded | @ChrisF - True. What are the rules on this kind of question here? I know that on SO they get closed pretty quickly. | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 17:08 | comment | added | ChrisF♦ | @Oded - the implication is that this should be closed as not constructive too. | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 17:06 | comment | added | Steve Jackson | Only those that work with text :) | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 17:04 | answer | added | NimChimpsky | timeline score: 6 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 17:02 | comment | added | FishBasketGordo | Why wouldn't you want to learn them? You've already encountered at least one situation where you would've benefited from knowing them. Doesn't it stand to reason that you may find yourself in a similar situation in the future? | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 16:59 | answer | added | Jonathan Rich | timeline score: 34 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 16:58 | comment | added | Oded | @ChrisF - This question is regex specific. The linked one is a poll type asking for any kind of library (and should be closed as off-topic, IMHO). | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 16:56 | comment | added | ChrisF♦ | Possible duplicate - programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/… | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 16:53 | comment | added | SK-logic | It is a must for all the power users. And programmers have to be power users in order to be productive. | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 16:51 | answer | added | ptyx | timeline score: 115 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 16:49 | answer | added | Smokefoot | timeline score: 0 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 16:49 | answer | added | Oded | timeline score: 22 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 16:47 | answer | added | eykanal | timeline score: 56 | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 16:46 | comment | added | Tyanna | I personally know what they are, when to use them and how to google syntax. shrugs | |
| Feb 8, 2012 at 16:42 | history | asked | user | CC BY-SA 3.0 |