Regular Expressions

Meet the metacharacters: ^[](){}.*?\|+$ and sometimes -

I know, they look intimidating, but they're really nice characters once you get to know them. -Mike Malone

The absolute bare minimum every programmer should know about regular expressions Wtf is a regular expression? Regular expressions are strings formatted using a special pattern notation that allow you to describe and parse text. Many programmers (even some good ones) disregard regular expressions as line noise, and it’s a damned shame because they come in handy so often. Once you’ve gotten the hang of them, regular expressions can be used to solve countless real world problems.