Regex explanations

[data-lessons]

Regex explanations

[drjwbaker]

@weaverbel So, you want to 'answers' put somewhere?

[weaverbel]

@drjwbaker I would like an actual explanation of what each of the different regex constructions actually DO, and what is the best and most economical way to write them as people are interested in that. Also it would be good to have examples of regexes they might want to reuse, e.g. the regex to pull out an email address from anywhere. @pitviper6 gave me this one

\b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,}\b

and then someone else came up with this one but it wasn't as good.

\b[A-Z0-9.-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\b

Also how to pull out postcodes and things like that ...

I know I should probably just put in more time learning all this BEFORE I teach it but that is a luxury I can't afford ;-( Luckily I take a regex wizard with me.

[drjwbaker]

Okay. I'll wrap this up with #24 and get on with it once I've cleared by current marking load!

[drjwbaker]

Work started. See #24 for update.

[drjwbaker]

Done now.

[weaverbel]

fantastic - thanks James @drjwbaker