So What's A $#!%% Regular Expression, Anyway?!
By Vikram Vaswani and Harish Kamath
Melonfire
April 12, 2000

Introduction
Ask any relatively-experienced *NIX user to list his top ten favorite things about the operating system, and you're almost certain to hear him mutter, somewhere between "99% uptime" and "remote system reboots", the phrase "regular expressions".

Ask any relatively-experienced *NIX user to list the ten things he hates most about the operating system, and somewhere between "zombie processes" and "installation", he's sure to spit out the phrase "regular expressions".

It's precisely this complex love-hate equation that spawned the idea for a tutorial on regular expressions - surely, went the reasoning, something that induced such strong emotions in normally hard-headed *NIX administrators was worthy of investigation. And so, regardless of whether you're new to regular expressions, or an old hand at putting them together, the next few pages should help you resolve your conflicted feelings on the subject. Hey - it *is* cheaper than therapy...

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