Beginners - Learning Regular Expressions For Programmers

John K.

Way above my head.

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Alexander H.

Good introduction

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Brad K.

This course is regex with grep, javascipt, java, and C#. Prospective students will want to have been exposed to some kind of programming language.

This course was just O.K.. I think the use of so many languages was unnecessary and might be confusing to some. I also take exception to the end of the course when the instructor "recommends" using javascript shell for scripts. We all have our personal opinions, but why use such a convoluted language for scripting (or anything else for that matter). If you want/need a scripting language, use Python. (which, for the average user, would have been easier-to-follow and far easier-to-understand.)
js @ CL == waste-of-your-time!

Others may like the multi language demonstrations. I had no problems with languages, I'm just not so sure that that was the best approach to regex's. The course did not progress as far as I thought it would. It's pretty much "just the basics".

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Gary M. M.

This is a beginner's course with a split personality. It does a decent job of introducing Regular Expressions and its examples were largely focused on programmers. Although the laymen who encounters RegEx in the various places it has sprouted up over the years will get enough to be less than confused by the oft-druidic nature of regular expressions. So, the given goal of the course seems met.

Unfortunately, the decision to leave Grep behind after the third chapter greatly lessened the value to me. I have no interest in any of the demonstrated languages. My intersection with RegEx comes from completely different languages and in working with Calibre, the ebook library program. As such, the peculiarities of language constructs from the chosen languages were wasted upon me, to some extent.

Might I make a suggestion should the course ever be re-organized? All the chapters should have been Grep-centric, including section 5. Instead of using language examples to demonstrate principles, Grep should have been continued to be used, as a base interpretation of the pseudo-language. In fact, it would have allowed building on earlier examples, like making stronger url-testing.

A concluding set of chapters could have concentrated on implementations in each language, one chapter to each language (each of which could have been skipped as per the interests or non-interests of the students). The FINAL chapter would have been on the advanced subject of replacement, a subject that extends beyond the Grep ability to search and not to search and replace. That would have been a multi-language presentation.

Basically, the same material in a slightly different order.

Other improvements? I would have liked the applets to be finished completely for each chapter, with only the RegEx to be filled in. The code could have been commented to aid in the explaining AND an editor for each language could have been chosen that highlighted the current line under discussion and the character highlighting could have been a slightly better defined colour combination, such as yellow on black, for example. The C# editor could have been focused more directly rather than being part of the IDE. It was a little small to these old eyes.

Having commented on the content, let me compliment the verbal presentation. Clearly spoken descriptions and done at a reasonable pace. A paucity of ums and corrections. It was a strong component to this course, which I give a passing grade to.

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