Today was the 1st June, and that means it's Regex Day again!
This annual event was started four years ago by Ben Nadel to celebrate this wonderful (yet often misunderstood) technology, and as usual Ben is running a fun regex competition, with prizes, on his blog.
If that's not enough regex goodness for you, here's a couple of projects you should know about.
First up, there's XRegExp, a library by Steven Levithan which augments JavaScript's native regex functionality with new functionality, and ensures cross-browser compatibility.
For CFML developers, there's cfRegex a replacement regex implemenation providing more power and functionality than CFML's native functions, whilst being easier to work with.
Whatever your level of regex skill, both of these tools are definitely worth checking out.
The cfRegex project is two things. Firstly, it is a complete regex implementation
for CFML, providing more functionality, flexibility, features and power than the
existing CFML RE functions. Secondly, it is a drive to encourage people to
properly learn and make use of regex.
Regex is a very flexible language for matching patterns within text, and it has
the power to greatly simplify certain programming tasks. However, it can also be
intimidating to people not experienced with it.
This problem can be compounded by the relatively limited support for regex in
CFML, which often means code is written that is more complex than should be
necessary.
cfRegex helps to address both these problems. It provides a number of functions
and features that help to reduce the amount of code which programmers have to
write, whilst also helping to make their code clearer and easier to understand.
In addition, the project provides documentation, not just for its own features,
but also for regex itself, helping people to understand exactly what their
expressions are matching, and how to get the most out of regex.
Whilst cfRegex is still at a relatively early stage, it is currently usable, and
if you're a fan of regex it is certainly worth checking out.
It currently runs on CF 9.0.1, OpenBD 2.0, Railo 3.2 and later.
(Support for CF8 and others will be considered if enough people need it.)
The documentation should tell you everything you need to know about using it,
but if not then get it touch and say what's missing so it can be fixed!
If you get stuck, there's a mailing list where you can receive answers to any
problems or questions you have.
It's 1st June 2010 today, and that means we're celebrating for the third time the annual International Regular Expressions Day.
Ben Nadel kicked off this event two years ago, in order to promote the use of Regex, especially amongst those who might consider them something scary and obscure.
As before, Ben is running a contest, this year's prizes being some O'Reily Regex books and IIS Mod-Rewrite Pro licenses.
Entry to the competition requires writing some code, and the deadline is today, so if you're interested then hurry up and
read Ben's blog entry to find out more.
Happy Regex Day!
Java RegEx Utilities, or jre-utils, is a CFC which provides a convenient way to access Java's regular expression functionality.
Whilst ColdFusion, Railo, and openBD are all built on Java, and CFML does have regular expression functions, they do not actually use the Java regular expression engine, which supports many useful regex constructs.
The purpose of jre-utils is to provide this extra power to CFML developers in a familiar and easy to use way.
I will shortly be releasing v0.7 of jre-utils, which adds a number of new functions, as well as making things more consistent, so I decided I would give this quick preview of what it contains.
Today, 1st June 2008, has been officially decreed as Regular Expressions Day.
And in honour of this event, there are a couple of regex-oriented competitions happening.
Ben Nadel, nominator of this great day, kicked things off with a handful of prizes for the best comments:
June 1st 2008 - National Regular Expression Day!
The deadline for Ben's competition is today - that is, you must post the comment on (or before) RegExp Day, and the winners will be selected tomorrow.
Don't despair if you miss that though, as Steve Levithan also has a regular expression competition running, and the deadline for that is Friday 13th, almost two weeks from now:
Regex Day Contest
Happy RegEx Day!
