
Show HN: Learn Regular Expressions with simple, interactive exercises - pusv
https://regexone.com/
======
dang
This was posted by a spam ring. The site has been submitted many times
([https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=regexone.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=regexone.com)).

Would you please stop this? You're wasting your time. We ban these accounts
and everything that you try to promote with them. Karma doesn't help.

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dayvid
This is one of the best online learning experiences I've ever had. I went
through it twice and never felt uncomfortable with regular expressions
afterwards. The author also does this for SQL, which I haven't tried:
[https://sqlbolt.com/](https://sqlbolt.com/)

Are there any other online learning courses like this?

~~~
dceddia
A few others are CSS Grid Garden [0] and Flexbox Froggy [1], both multi-level
games that teach CSS grid and flexbox techniques with one new concept per
level. There's also Flexbox Zombies [2] which requires signup but is still fun
and free.

0: [https://cssgridgarden.com/](https://cssgridgarden.com/)

1: [https://flexboxfroggy.com/](https://flexboxfroggy.com/)

2: [https://geddski.teachable.com/p/flexbox-
zombies](https://geddski.teachable.com/p/flexbox-zombies)

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7177Y
Also [https://regexcrossword.com/](https://regexcrossword.com/)

Very good practice to reinforce fundamentals after you're done regexone

~~~
wodenokoto
I second this recommendation.

You need a lot of practice for a new language to stick and once you’ve done
your first 1-2 tutorials and feel like you get kinda get it, actual tasks
involving regex will seem far and between, but these crosswords are a great
way to crystallize your new learnings.

And also fun to do!

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rozab
I recommend [https://alf.nu/RegexGolf](https://alf.nu/RegexGolf) for
timewasting

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zeroflow
If this is your site, my feedback is, to have a more clear cut destinction
between the explaination and the task at hand.

~~~
asicsp
should be right, as it is "Show HN", although [0] indicates this site has been
submitted previously under different usernames

I'd add some more feedback:

* Add some detail about which regex flavor is used for the lessons, if they are meant to be common features between the flavors listed under 'References & More', again, mention it somewhere. For example, someone trying to learn regex for grep/sed/awk will discover that `\d` will not work.

* I get that the lessons are not meant to cover everything, for example lookarounds/non-greedy/backreferences aren't covered, but I'd feel word boundaries after the line anchors would make a good addition. __Edit __Some of these are covered in lesson 15, but that is not linked in the sidebar under 'Lesson Notes'

[0] [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=regexone](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=regexone)

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jrumbut
When you finish all the lessons, then you'll have two problems.

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Hitton
Not to sound dismissive, but virtually everyone, who knows what are regular
expressions, knows this. Only last, 15th, lesson starts to touch on things
that are arguably not common knowledge - word boundaries and back references.
Look aheads and look behinds, the parts which most people struggle with,
aren't covered at all.

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asdf_snar
I was going to post, "that's too bad, there's already an excellent one out
there." Yep, this is how I learned regex. In fact, I don't even worry about
forgetting regex, since 10 minutes on this and I have most of what I need.

Excellent, excellent website.

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dwheeler
It's a cool presentation. Careful, however, this only teaches a _specific_
variant of regexes (the PCRE ones). Those are common, but expressions like
"\d" won't work in grep, sed, or many other tools. I wish it had noted the
variances.

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lukifer
One mnemonic that stuck with me: you can remember the start and end characters
(/^foo$/) by imagining an animal, like a rhino: the ^ is the horn at the
front, the $ is the long curvy tail at the end.

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underdeserver
Worth it, so you can fly in on a rope and save the day.

[https://xkcd.com/208/](https://xkcd.com/208/)

(Yeah, I know you've seen it before. But 10,000 people/day haven't.
[https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/))

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evolveyourmind
You should fix the checker to match the whole strings, not just substrings.
One can pass the following example with just \\. : Match cat. Match 896. Match
?=+. Skip abc1

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DiggyJohnson
Thanks for sharing. Hope it helps some people out.

I took a look at it and have a small nitpick: you refer to the '\' character
as "slash". See Lesson 2 for example.

Cheers

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TruthSHIFT
I'm not a RegEx expert, but I've googled them enough to have the basics. This
is exactly what I needed to improve my skills.

~~~
SemiNormal
[https://regexr.com/](https://regexr.com/) is another good site for testing
your RegEx.

~~~
asicsp
For more such sites:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20614847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20614847)

See also: [https://github.com/aloisdg/awesome-
regex](https://github.com/aloisdg/awesome-regex)

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glxxyz
I just read _man re_format_ but that's a lot more fun

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padseeker
outstanding - I've struggled with regex, the capture group lesson was
illuminating

