Regular Expression Tool

March 19, 2008 by Isaac

I think it's a safe bet to say that anyone who has been in software testing or programming for any length of time has had to create a regular expression (RE). Most of the RE's that I create are simple and I can do them quickly. However, this past week I had need to create several RE's that were more complex than normal. Fortunately, open source software came to the rescue. I found this great tool called Regular Expression Editor. My kudos to the author of that program. It allows you to enter some sample text in one box and the RE in another. As you type in your regular expression the sample text is highlighted and you can see if what you are typing is working or not. This tool allowed me to find some problems with my initial regular expression and fine tune it for some corner cases.

Although the author claims the main purpose of this tool is to edit text using regular expressions, I find it useful for fine tuning my regular expressions.

Posted in Administration, Computer Stuff, Programming