As the developers, we all at sometimes encounter a situation where we need to validate a string against certain pattern. This is the scenarios where we all try to fit the RegEx patterns. Regular expressions (regex or regexp) are extremely useful in extracting information from any text. The information is searched for one or more matches of a specific search pattern (i.e. a specific sequence of ASCII or unicode characters). In this journal entry we will looking at the Top 5 Online RegEx pattern tools. These tools can help us solve in writing the regex patterns to extract specific information.
Before we actually discuss these tools, lets have a small peek at the history of the RegEx. In the 1950s, distinguished American mathematician Stephen Kleene invented regular expressions, which is what he called his notation for expressing the algebra of regular sets. The regex * metacharacter (called the Kleene star) is named after him.
Top 5 Online RegEx Pattern Tools
- Regular Expression 101 (https://regex101.com)
- RegExr (https://regexr.com)
- txt2re (https://txt2re.com)
- RegEx Testing (https://www.regextester.com)
- FreeFormatter – Regular Expression Tester (https://www.freeformatter.com/regex-tester.html)
The most interesting feature of Regular Expressions (RegEx) is that once you’ve learned the syntax, you can make full use of these tools. The patterns can be used with any programming languages, like, Java, Javascript, C#, C, C++, Python, Pern, PHP, etc, with the slightest distinctions. The slightest distinctions can be about the support of the advanced features and syntax versions supported by these programming engines.