Not to long ago I was writing a complex Regular Expression and ran into a rather difficult problem. This was an update to a regular expression in Drupal and needed to be validated before the bug fix could be committed. The problem was that I couldn't find anyone who was comfortable working through the regex with me. This is where the required tests in Drupal saved the day. The tests provided feedback when things failed and eventually validated the expression when it was right so other developers didn't need to. Let me walk through the process of how this worked. Read more »

Since most of use don't get to use Regular Expressions on a regular basis, tools to help us write them can make a huge difference to our sanity. Especially, if your trying to write anything complex that you can't find the solution to with a simple Google search. Here are a few simple tools that may help writing those fun and challenging regex. Read more »

Regular Expressions are one of the most powerful tools in a developers arsenal. Yet, I'm amazed at the number of developers who jump through hoops to avoid using them because they aren't comfortable working with them. I have a simple rule about regular expressions. Every application should use Regular Expressions. Sure, there are exceptions to this rule but I find them to be very rare. I don't mean to say you need to look for uses of Regular Expressions. In most web applications there is a case where they are just the best tool for the job. Read more »