Book details

Scripting and automation tasks often need to extract particular portions of text from input data or modify them from one format to another.

This book will help you learn Python Regular Expressions, a mini-programming language for all sorts of text processing needs.

The book heavily leans on examples to present features of regular expressions one by one. It is recommended that you manually type each example and experiment with them.

Both the standard re module and the popular third-party regex module are covered in this book.

Exercises are also included to test your understanding.

Prerequisites

You should be familiar with programming basics. You should also have a working knowledge of Python syntax and features like string formats, string methods and list comprehensions.

You are also expected to get comfortable with reading manuals, searching online, visiting external links provided for further reading, tinkering with illustrated examples, asking for help when you are stuck and so on. In other words, be proactive and curious instead of just consuming the content passively.

If you have prior experience with a programming language but not Python, see my curated list of learning resources before starting this book.

Testimonials

I love your books on regex...As a student from the Digital VLSI space, it is indeed useful now and definitely in the future. It's really well written and really easy to understand the examples — feedback on reddit

GitHub repo

Visit https://github.com/learnbyexample/py_regular_expressions for markdown source, example files, exercise solutions and other details related to the book.

Interactive exercises

Based on the book contents as well as the exercises, I made an interactive TUI app with 100+ questions covering both the builtin re module and the third-partyregex module. These exercises will test your understanding of anchors, alternation, grouping, escaping metacharacters, dot metacharacter, quantifiers, character class, lookarounds, flags, etc.

Feedback and Errata

I would highly appreciate if you'd let me know how you felt about this ebook. It could be anything from a simple thank you, pointing out a typo, mistakes in code snippets, which aspects of the book worked for you (or didn't!) and so on. Reader feedback is essential and especially so for self-published authors. You can reach me via:

• Issue Manager: https://github.com/learnbyexample/py_regular_expressions/issues
• E-mail: learnbyexample.net@gmail.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/learn_byexample

It's very thorough, written with care, and presented in a way that makes sense. Even as an intermediate Python programmer, I found use in this book. — feedback by Andrew Healey on an early draft mentioned in this Hacker News thread

This book is a short, introductory guide for the Python programming language. This book is well suited:

• As a reference material for Python beginner workshops
• If you have prior experience with another programming language
• If you want a complement resource after reading a Python basics book, watching a video course, etc

Prerequisites: You should be already familiar with basic programming concepts. If you are new to programming, see my curated list of resources (https://learnbyexample.github.io/py_resources/) instead.

Exercises are included to test your understanding. Visit https://github.com/learnbyexample/100_page_python_intro for program files, markdown source and other details about the book.

Book details

Beginners who've finished a basic programming book or a course often wonder what they should do next. After solving exercises that test your understanding of syntax and common logical problems, working on projects is often recommended as the next step in the programming journey.

Working on projects that'll help you solve real world use cases would be ideal. You'll likely have enough incentive to push through difficulties instead of abandoning the project. Sometimes though, you just don't know what to work on. Or, you have ideas, but not sure how to implement them, how to break down the project into manageable parts, etc. In such cases, a learning resource focused on projects can help.

This book presents five beginner to intermediate level projects inspired by real world use cases:

1. Enhance your CLI experience with a custom Python calculator
2. Analyzing poll data from a Reddit comment thread
3. Finding typos in plain text and Markdown files
4. Creating a GUI for evaluating multiple choice questions
5. Square Tic Tac Toe — creating a GUI game with AI

To test your understanding and to make it more interesting, you'll also be presented with exercises at the end of each project. Resources for further exploration are also mentioned throughout the book.

Testimonials

Your Practice Python Projects book is really helping me to reinforce my knowledge and mastery of Python as I'm learning — feedback on twitter

GitHub repo

Visit https://github.com/learnbyexample/practice_python_projects for programs and related example files presented in this book.

Feedback and Errata

I would highly appreciate if you'd let me know how you felt about this ebook. It could be anything from a simple thank you, pointing out a typo, mistakes in code snippets, which aspects of the book worked for you (or didn't!) and so on. Reader feedback is essential and especially so for self-published authors. You can reach me via:

• Issue Manager: https://github.com/learnbyexample/practice_python_projects/issues
• E-mail: learnbyexample.net@gmail.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/learn_byexample