"/href\=(['\"]?)((?<=['\"]{1})[^\\1]*?|(?<=\=|)[^\s>]*)(\\1)/i"

[Beau]

I :heart: regular expressions.

 

[AdamSnow]

Confused the hell out of me.

 

[Beau]

No one else likes RegExp?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I dunno if I would say I like them. They serve a purpose.

 

[Beau]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
I dunno if I would say I like them. They serve a purpose.

A damn good purpose. IMO, they're much more elegant than just about any other string comparison method.

 

[Schrodinger]

Originally posted by: Beau

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
I dunno if I would say I like them. They serve a purpose.

A damn good purpose. IMO, they're much more elegant than just about any other string comparison method.

Agreed. They can greatly simplify the validation process. Just make a boolean flag, if the value passed in satisfies the regex then go forward, else throw up error message.

I can't imagine handcoding a bunch of if statements to check the case and characters allowed.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Beau

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
I dunno if I would say I like them. They serve a purpose.

A damn good purpose. IMO, they're much more elegant than just about any other string comparison method.

Hah, well I don't know if I could describe "/href\=(['\"]?)((?<=['\"]{1})[^\\1]*?|(?<=\=|)[^\s>]*)(\\1)/i" as "elegant." Regexps can get really nasty. Yeah, they are great in their own way, but they have their ups and downs like anything else. They're not some magical wand.

if $text =~ /^\s*$/

is much less elegant, IMO, than

if not len(text.strip())

 

[dighn]

they are great for string validation and parsing. the readability is horrible though

 

[Beau]

Originally posted by: dighn
they are great for string validation and parsing. the readability is horrible though

It's also great for document parsing.

Just like anything else, it takes practice.

 

[Czar]

when I was doing php they scared the hell out of me... still do