regexio
Dev tools
regex tester
SHOW HN2010
How HN took it
3 positive, 5 neutral or asking, 3 mixed, 2 critical, out of 13 comments about the project. Thread score +0.14.
Execution: 0 for, 2 againstIdea: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Useful for understanding regex by seeing matches.
From 3 comments
It doesn't seem to be able to handle character classes of the type [^abc], which matches any character except a, b, or c. It's pretty cool, though. I tried copying and pasting…
pjscott on HNWhat an exceptionally helpful tool! thanks.
frobozz on HNBookmarked. I had an immediate use for this, and your application filled it beautifully.
jimbokun on HN
Objections
Does not support negated character classes like [^abc].
From 2 comments
It doesn't seem to be able to handle character classes of the type [^abc], which matches any character except a, b, or c. It's pretty cool, though. I tried copying and pasting…
pjscott on HNI purposely punted on inverted character classes because they brought up a major usability issue that I didn't have a quick solution for. The expression /[^abc]/ should match…
rndmcnlly0 on HN
Back-references support is limited to one group.
From 1 comment
Congrats on supporting back-references :) Hint: Try using "1(0+)1\1" or "([a-zA-Z]+)\1" for some nifty examples of things that technically aren't possible with true regular…
nuclear_eclipse on HN
Special characters like \d do not work as expected.
From 1 comment
This first thing I tried to do was ``` [\d]+ ``` But it didn't work. Took me a few tries to get it to work. I'm guessing it simply doesn't work with special regex characters. You…
JangoSteve on HN
Requests
Generate matches from a selected background language like HTML or ASCII.
From 1 comment
I purposely punted on inverted character classes because they brought up a major usability issue that I didn't have a quick solution for. The expression /[^abc]/ should match…
rndmcnlly0 on HN
Support selecting different regex engines such as Python, Perl, or Emacs.
From 1 comment
One thing that would be useful is if I could select different regex engines. Python does things slightly differently from Perl, C#, and (especially) emacs.
j_baker on HN
Show multiple example matches rather than one.
From 1 comment
I think that it should show for example 10 matches (not only one), so it is easier to have an idea of "all" the possible matches.
gus_massa on HN
Generate a regex from a highlighted example string.
From 1 comment
This first thing I tried to do was ``` [\d]+ ``` But it didn't work. Took me a few tries to get it to work. I'm guessing it simply doesn't work with special regex characters. You…
JangoSteve on HN
Questions
How to generate all strings matching a regex efficiently.
From 2 comments
In grad school I had a need for a tool that would generate all strings accepted by a regex of a specified size. I wrote one myself, but was never really satisfied that I did a…
kenjackson on HNDoug McIlroy wrote an article on that: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/nfa.ps.gz Code: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/nfa.hs
abecedarius on HN
Alternatives named
Rubular
From 2 comments
Similar: http://rubular.com/
swaits on HNYes, I realize that rubular doesn't generate the matches. But they are both web sites where you primarily enter a regex in order to explore its behavior. The similarity is obvious.
swaits on HN
RegexPal
From 1 comment
Something similar to check-out. Based in javascript and lets you visually verify basic patterns on text-blocks: http://regexpal.com/
sharpemt on HN
txt2re
From 1 comment
I've found http://txt2re.com/ to be very helpful for simple things.
DTrejo on HN
Microsoft Rex
From 1 comment
Nearly forgot this similar effort: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/rex/
elblanco on HN
Pythex
From 1 comment
And the Python 're' option: http://pythex.org/
teoruiz on HN