Posted by Erwin Moller on 12/21/06 09:40

Curtis wrote:

> "Kimmo Laine" <s...@outolempi.net> wrote:
>> When you keep hitting your head to a brick wall long
>> time enough, you'll eventually learn to go around it or become a graphic
>> designer.
>
> LOL
>
>> The basic problem was that RegExp's were never mentioned when I was back
>> in school learning all this programming shit so I had no basic
>> understanding of it when I started writing php 9 to 5. But I eventually
>> got it.
>
> I was in a similar situation. When I started programming, I was
> bouncing back and forth between Perl and PHP, all the while trying to
> grasp regex in between. It was very difficult for me to wrap my mind
> around it at first, so I generally tried to stay away. But I was in a
> sort of love-hate relationship, as I found the incessant challenge
> somewhat alluring. Before I knew it, I realized I was able to
> incorporate regex into a great deal of my programming, and it
> ironically has become one of my strongest areas. Strange, I always
> found that all the regex tutorials I read always started out very easy,
> and out of nowhere became insanely hard to follow. Learning by doing
> was definitely the way I learned how to use them practically.
>
> To the OP, if you are struggling with regex, I would recommend making
> use of the /x modifier so that you can separate your patterns with
> whitespace.

Same here. :-)
I would like to put some attention to a great resource: 'Mastering Regular
Expressions' by Friedl, published by O'Reilly (again).

That Friedl-guy is aware of the fact you need practicing, and encourages you
through the whole book with excercises to actually do it.
All excercises are doable once your read the chapter they belong to.

I love learn-by-doing approach for difficult stuff.
For anybody who is thinking about learning regex, this book is totally worth
your money.

Erwin

>
>
> Curtis

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