php regular expressions resources

Question

can somebody point me to a good regular expression resource (for php if it matters). I am looking now for a book here amazon but don't know which one is better. It would be great to find something simple to understand and a fast and interesting process of learning.

Answer 1

You can start at http://www.regular-expressions.info/

The site also has a list of regular expressions books.

PHP supports several regular expressions variants, but the most important is PCRE (perl-comptabible regular expressions).

The mb_ereg family, besides supporting several encodings, also supports several variants :

j   Java (Sun java.util.regex)
u   GNU regex
g   grep
c   Emacs
r   Ruby
z   Perl
b   POSIX Basic regex
d   POSIX Extended regex

Answer 2

Mastering Regular Expressions by: Jeffrey EF Friedl is considered the bible of Regular Expressions books.

Also, as Artefacto mentioned: http://www.regular-expressions.info/ is a terrific resource with clear and simple explanations.

But the best way to learn is to play with them using a regex tool like Reggy (Mac tool)

Answer 3

Along with http://www.regular-expressions.info , you might find it useful to get an interactive regex editor.

The Regex Coach is a good, light-weight editor.

RegexBuddy is amazing, but costly.

regexpal.com a simple, online tester.

Answer 4

This is the only place I've found an intro to regular expressions that's suitable for beginners. It's part of an online book called "Practical PHP".

http://www.tuxradar.com/practicalphp/4/8/0

Answer 5

These are the only regex books you'll ever need:

Mastering Regular Expressions

Regular Expressions Cookbook

Both are great tools for learning regexes in general, but they both have lots of information specific to PHP as well.