Headache relief for programmers: Regular expression generator | Hacker News Reader

Headache relief for programmers: Regular expression generator

txt2re.com

21 pointsedw51912 comments

This solves a non-existing problem. Regexps are hardly a "headache" for any reasonably good programmer.

This is also a dupe - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=149631

Maybe I'm not a "reasonably good" programmer, but I use this tool all the time. Lots of languages have little re nuances that may be hard to remember.

This kind of a UI looks like a bigger headache to me...

REs are easier to write than to understand. It would be great to have a tool that visualizes existing REs, I think.

> It would be great to have a tool that visualizes existing REs, I think.

This one is pretty cool to play around with, not sure how useful it is in practice though: http://osteele.com/tools/reanimator/

Beautiful work. Can be useful for RE compiler makers perhaps...

RegEx Buddy (http://www.regexbuddy.com) is also pretty good. It breaks down the regex into its parts in an intuitive interface. Furthermore, it allows you to easily switch between the various regex styles, along with its platform specific variation.

It's also great for deciphering expressions long forgotten, definitely a lifesaver.

RegEx buddy is great, it's well worth the money if you are doing lots of regular expressions. I had to give it up when I switched to Ubuntu (though apparently it works ok under wine).

what about a tool that you enter 'instances' in (say, a few examples of valid email addresses) and it gives you the most specific regex that matches all of them

Oh come on, this so takes the fun out of hacking regexs.

how about a regex maintainer. it's no problem to write one in the first place.

You sir, hit the nail on the head! We need the exact opposite: enter a regex pattern, and a sample string... then fire up a similar GUI to tweak the expression until it's working again.

Agreed. Regexs are not very difficult to write if one is a good programmer and understands what they are searching for.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com