Learning Regular Expressions

Course details

Regular expressions can speed up tedious tasks and streamline your workflow. They are an indispensable tool with programming languages like Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, Ruby, C#, and more. In this course, instructor Kevin Skoglund goes over the definitions, details, and basic processes to start using regular expressions. Kevin explains what regular expressions are, what types are available in different programming languages, and what notations you should use. He dives into characters and character sets, then goes over how repetition is used with metacharacters, how it can be quantified, and more. He discusses grouping, alternation, and anchors. Kevin shows you how to capture content and create a backreference to the captured data. Plus, he covers positive and negative lookahead assertions, lookbehind assertions, and multiple lookaround assertions.

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Write text matching patterns

1. Get Started with Regular Expressions

02 - What are regular expressions
03 - Choose a regular expression engine
04 - Notation conventions and modes

2. Characters

05 - Literal characters
06 - Metacharacters
07 - The wildcard metacharacter
08 - Escaping metacharacters
09 - Other special characters
10 - Challenge - Characters
11 - Solution - Characters

3. Character Sets

12 - Define a character set
13 - Character ranges
14 - Negative character sets
15 - Metacharacters inside characters sets
16 - Shorthand character sets
17 - Challenge - Character sets
18 - Solution - Character sets

4. Repetition

19 - Repetition metacharacters
20 - Quantified repetition
21 - Greedy expressions
22 - Lazy expressions
23 - Challenge - Repetition
24 - Solution - Repetition

5. Grouping and Alternation

25 - Grouping metacharacters
26 - Alternation metacharacters
27 - Efficiency when using alternation
28 - Challenge - Grouping and alternation
29 - Solution - Grouping and alternation

6. Anchors

30 - Start and end anchors
31 - Line breaks and multiline mode
32 - Word boundaries
33 - Challenge - Anchors
34 - Solution - Anchors

7. Capturing Groups and Backreferences

35 - Captures and backreferences
36 - Backreferences to optional expressions
37 - Find and replace using backreferences
38 - Non-capturing group expressions
39 - Challenge - Backreferences
40 - Solution - Backreferences

8. Lookaround Assertions

41 - Positive lookahead assertions
42 - Negative lookahead assertions
43 - Lookbehind assertions
44 - Multiple lookaround assertions
45 - Challenge - Lookaround assertions
46 - Solution - Lookaround assertions

Conclusion

47 - Next steps