Understanding Python re(gex)?
Understanding Python re(gex)?
Example based guide to mastering Python regular expressions
About the Book
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
About the Author
Bundles that include this book
Table of Contents
1. Preface
2. Why is it needed?
3. re introduction
4. Anchors
5. Alternation and Grouping
6. Escaping metacharacters
7. Dot metacharacter and Quantifiers
8. Interlude: Tools for debugging and visualization
9. Working with matched portions
10. Character class
11. Groupings and backreferences
12. Interlude: Common tasks
13. Lookarounds
14. Flags
15. Unicode
16. regex module
17. Gotchas
18. Further Reading
Other books by this author
The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
Now, this is technically risky for us, since you'll have the book or course files either way. But we're so confident in our products and services, and in our authors and readers, that we're happy to offer a full money back guarantee for everything we sell.
You can only find out how good something is by trying it, and because of our 100% money back guarantee there's literally no risk to do so!
So, there's no reason not to click the Add to Cart button, is there?
See full terms...
80% Royalties. Earn $16 on a $20 book.
We pay 80% royalties. That's not a typo: you earn $16 on a $20 sale. If we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book or course for $20, you'll earn $80,000.
(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)
In fact, authors have earnedover $13 millionwriting, publishing and selling on Leanpub.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
