RegEx (also known as
regexp and sometimes
grep) is short-hand for
regular expressions, a powerful, concise (and tricky!) approach to advanced find (and replace) operations.
Although regular expressions can be hard work, they really pay dividends. For example, this wiki page is created from custom Lotusscript parsing functions code: wiki mark-up through the marvel of regular expressions can be more concise and easier for the programmer to implement (DominoWiki used to use regexp, but the Domino Java engine was simply too slow for this to be worthwhile).
You can read more about regular expressions, and how to get going with them, at the evolt.org site here:
Regular Expression Basics
If you're an Eclipse user, be sure to check out my EclipsePlugin page for details about a nifty regex testing plug-in!
Otherwise, check this Java (Swing) app out ... very handy:
JRegexpTester
Also check out RegexBuddy™ for an honest to goodness awesome IDE for developing and learning regex. I like it so much I paid the $30 dollars, very cool!
External links
Easy Regex Tutorial