Regular Expressions Questions and Answers

Good value. Not perfect, but I would buy another book from this author.

I have been working with regular expressions for a few years now and I still found plenty here that was new to me. The explanations are careful without being condescending, which is a difficult balance to strike. There is a section near the end that ties several earlier ideas together in a way I had not seen before. Four stars, and I suspect a second edition could easily push it to five.

Decent, but uneven. Some chapters are much stronger than others.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. The chapters on regular expressions are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. A couple of chapters felt like they could have been merged, but that is a minor complaint. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. Three stars feels about right. It will stay on my shelf, but it will not be the first one I reach for.

A useful guide. The examples assume a particular environment, but that is fixable.

I came to this book already familiar with the basics, and it still had plenty to offer. The writing is direct and does not waste space on filler, which I value in a technical book. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. Recommended, with the caveat that it is not a gentle introduction.