User's Manual

Overview

RegExplorer is designed to be a quick and easy utility for tinkering with regular expressions. I wrote it for my own use as a programmer to make it easier to run tests on my regex's to make sure they were matching and replacing text the way I expected. 

To use RegExplorer, type a regular expression in the Regular Expression field, and some sample text to search into the Search Text field, and click the Match button. The search results will appear in the hierarchical list below the Search Text field. Clicking on the disclosure triangle opens up each "hit" to reveal the exact subexpression match(es), if any, in your search string. Double-click on any cell in the list to open an inspection window and view the exact contents of each cell.

If you want to do search-and-replace tests, check the checkbox next to the Replacement Pattern field to activate it, then enter the replacement text, including backreferences if desired.

For convenience, the Match and Patterns menus contain entries for the various wildcard characters used in regular expressions (hmm, is \w a "word" character or a "whitespace" character, I always confuse those two...), and the History menu keeps a running list of the last several regular expressions you've entered, so you can easily go back to an earlier version if you need to.

Details

Click on a topic below for more detailed information:

• Expanding the edit fields
• Contextual menus
• Loading the Search Text field
• Options
• Regular Expression field
• Match menu and information windows
• Patterns menu
• Replacement Pattern field
• History menu
• Saving and loading the History menu items (registered version only)
• Search Text field
• One-shot versus batch
• Results List
• New version notification

Compatibility

RegExplorer is made with REALbasic and is designed for use with REALbasic, however non-RB users should also find RegExplorer helpful for most of their regular expression needs.  RB is based on the PCRE library for regular expressions, so RegExplorer, being written in RB, supports most, but not all, of the PCRE regular expression functionality. The following PCRE functions are not supported: conditional subpatterns, recursive subpatterns, subpatterns as subroutines, and callouts. (See the last few sections of the PCRE man pages for details on these functions if you're curious.) Other than that, all standard regular expression syntax is supported, plus lookahead and lookbehind assertions.

The exact specification for the supported regular expressions can be found in the REALbasic Language Reference, under RegEx. The Language Reference can be downloaded for free from http://www.realsoftware.com/.

Author

RegExplorer and this manual are both © 2005 by Mark Nutter.
All Rights Reserved.