regular expressions

What is meant by regular expressions?

The term "regular expressions" refers to an advanced technique of pattern recognition in texts. Regular expressions are used to search, identify, and manipulate strings of text based on specific patterns.

Typical software functions in the area of "regular expressions" include:

1. Pattern matching: Identifying strings that match a defined pattern, such as email addresses, URLs, or phone numbers.
2. Text replacement: Replacing parts of text that match a specific pattern with other strings.
3. Input validation: Checking if user input matches a specified pattern, for example when entering form data.
4. Data extraction: Extracting parts of text that match a specific pattern, such as filtering out dates or times from a text.
5. Syntax highlighting: Highlighting parts of text in a software application that match a defined pattern, such as in development environments.
6. Data manipulation: Manipulating and transforming text data based on identified patterns.

Examples of "regular expressions":

1. Searching for all email addresses in a text: A regular expression could be used to find all occurrences of email addresses (e.g., name@example.com) in a text.
2. Validating postal codes: A regular expression could be used to ensure that user input matches a valid postal code format (e.g., DE-12345).
3. Text replacement: A regular expression could be used to replace all occurrences of a specific word in a text with another word.
4. Extracting phone numbers: A regular expression could be used to extract phone numbers from a text, regardless of their format (e.g., +49 123 456789).
5. Syntax highlighting in a code editor software: A regular expression could be used to highlight keywords and variable names in code.
6. Data cleaning: A regular expression could be used to remove unwanted characters or formatting from a text to improve data quality.