A quick start introduction to the world of regular expressions, through special characters, quantifiers, character classes.. Assumes no knowledge of regular expressions.

1. Quick Intro to Regexen Brian McCauley (nobull) Birmingham.pm

3. For Regex Newbies

4. Assumes programming experience

6. Somewhat revised compared to proceedings

7. Not suitable for world authorities!

9. Notation does not a regex make

10. We're talking Perl notation

12. True regular expressions only a tiny subset of what we commonly mean

17. I'm not talking about the match operator

19. Escaped non-alphanumerics

22. Why do I keep saying “matches”?

24. Locates string described by the RE (following the cursor)

25. May also record additional information

28. Confusion if shorthand taken literally

30. Lower precedence than concatenation

31. Parentheses DWIM

32. Grouping with parentheses has a side-effect

37. Exact version of Perl

38. Cited as one of the most annoying features in Perl

40. Pattern, not string, repeated

41. Range (can be open-ended)

42. Precedence

48. First starting position in input

49. First choice in alternation

50. Most repeats in repeat

52. Can also go for the fewest

53. Only useful in the context of a larger expression

59. Records last cursor position at each ( )

61. $2='34'

67. Lots more assertions

68. The Perl substitution operator s///

69. Naming your captures

70. Embedding Perl code in your regex

71. Creating complex grammars by defining named subpatterns and using them later

72. It would take an hour just to enumerate them!

74. Questions?