Book details

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 standard re module and popular third party regex module is covered in this book.

Exercises are also included to test your understanding.

Prerequisites

You should have prior experience working with Python, should know concepts like string formats, string methods, list comprehension and so on.

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 code snippets and exercise files. The repo also has solutions for exercises.

Interactive exercises

Based on the book contents as well as the exercises, I made an interactive GUI app with 75 questions on `re.search`, `re.sub`, `re.split` and `re.findall` that'll test your understanding of anchors, alternation, grouping, escaping metacharacters, dot metacharacter, quantifiers, character class, grouping, lookarounds, flags, etc.

Literally was having a mini-breakdown about not understanding Regex in algorithm solutions the other day and now I'm feeling so much better, so thank YOU!

I genuinely feel like I'm developing the skill for spotting when and where to use them after so much practice! — feedback on twitter

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.

You should have a good understanding of basic-level programming concepts and prior experience working with JavaScript. Should also know functional programming concepts like map and filter.

Exercises are also included to test your understanding.

Visit https://github.com/learnbyexample/learn_js_regexp for code snippets. The repo also has exercises collated in a single file as well as another file with solutions.

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.

You should have prior experience working with Ruby, should know concepts like blocks, string formats, string methods, Enumerable, etc.

Exercises are also included to test your understanding.

Visit https://github.com/learnbyexample/Ruby_Regexp for code snippets and exercise files. The repo also has solutions for exercises.

The book heavily leans on examples to present features of grep as well as regular expressions one by one. It is recommended that you manually type each example and experiment with them. Understanding both the nature of sample input string and the output produced is essential.

You should have prior experience working with command line and bash shell, should know concepts like file redirection, command pipeline and so on.

Exercises are also included to test your understanding.

Visit https://github.com/learnbyexample/learn_gnugrep_ripgrep for code snippets and files used for examples/exercises in the book. The repo also has solutions for exercises.

The book heavily leans on examples to present features of sed as well as regular expressions one by one. It is recommended that you manually type each example and experiment with them. Understanding both the nature of sample input string and the output produced is essential.

You should have prior experience working with command line and bash shell, should know concepts like file redirection, command pipeline and so on.

Exercises are also included to test your understanding.

Visit https://github.com/learnbyexample/learn_gnused for code snippets and files used for examples/exercises in the book. The repo also has solutions for exercises.

Step up your cli fu with this fabulous intro & deep dive into awk. I learned a ton of tricks! — feedback on twitter

This book heavily leans on examples to present options and features of awk as well as regular expressions one by one. It is recommended that you manually type each example and experiment with them. Understanding both the nature of sample input string and the output produced is essential.

You should have prior experience working with command line and bash shell, should know concepts like file redirection, command pipeline and so on. You should also be familiar with programming concepts like variables, printing, functions, control structures, arrays, etc. Knowing basics of grep and sed will help in understanding similar features of awk.

Exercises are also included to test your understanding.

Visit https://github.com/learnbyexample/learn_gnuawk for code snippets and example files used in this book. The repo also has solutions for exercises.

About

Vim Reference Guide is intended as a concise learning resource for beginner to intermediate level Vim users. It has more in common with cheatsheets than a typical text book. Topics like Regular Expressions and Macros have more detailed explanations and examples due to their complexity.

The features covered in this guide are shaped and limited by my own experiences since 2007. I had a rough beginning as a design engineer having to learn Linux command line, Vim and Perl on the job. I distinctly remember progressing from dd (delete current line) to d↓ (delete current line as well as the line below) and feeling happy that it reduced time spent on editing. I didn't know about count prefix or the various ways I could've deleted all the lines from the beginning of the file to the line containing a specific phrase. Or even better, I could've automated editing multiple files if I had been familiar with Sed or progressed that far with Perl.

I hope this guide would make it much easier for you to discover Vim features and learning resources than my own blundering experience.

Prerequisites

I do give a brief introduction to get started with using Vim, but having prior experience would be ideal before using this resource. As a minimum requirement, you should be able to use vimtutor on your own.

Video playlist

I'm currently creating short 1-15 minute videos highlighting handy Vim features.

Testimonials

Got several suggestions and feedback when my submission about this book reached the front page of Hacker News.

Great job on this! — rendall

Hi, great work releasing this! Trying to explain vim concisely is always an interesting challenge and I had a great time reading your attempt in this book. I always find it really interesting on how people try to group certain vim functions in a way that makes sense to people that don't use vim. I think you cover that idea pretty well in your 'Vim philosophy and features' section whilst not making it overly abstract and keeping it relatable. — doix

Neat stuff! One piece of feedback is that I would include "+p and "+yy in the copy and paste section. — mrpotato

I learnt regular expression by reading your books, thank you for the great work. — LamJH

A comment from another Hacker News thread:

I stumbled upon your vi post a few days ago, really like the style. Keep it up!

GitHub repo

Visit https://github.com/learnbyexample/vim_reference for markdown source and other details related to the book.

Chapters

1. Preface
2. Introduction
3. Insert mode
4. Normal mode
5. Command-line mode
6. Visual mode
7. Regular Expressions
8. Macro
9. Customizing Vim
10. CLI options