Jeffrey Friedl's Mastering Regular Expressions

Mastering Regular Expressions
Second Edition Hip-looking owl

This is the web site for the second edition of Mastering Regular Expressions, by Jeffrey Friedl.

If you're interested in the book, here are a few links to its page on various online retailers: O'Reilly & Associates, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, booksamillion.com, readme .doc

Mastering Regular Expressions has been translated to a number of languages:

German
1^st and 2^nd
edition
French
1^st and 2^nd
edition
Japanese
1^st and 2^nd
edition
Polish
1^st
edition
Russian
1^st and 2^nd
edition
Korean
1^st and 2^nd
edition

Wondering about the book?
Here are some things that can help you learn about the book.

What's New
To help you decide if it's worth your while to upgrade from the first edition, I wrote this article at the O'Reilly Network. It describes what's been updated (everything), and what's new (lots).

What's Not New
What hasn't changed is the exhaustive research that went into it, the attention to detail, the breadth and depth of coverage, and the careful typesetting. (I did all the production myself, typesetting every speck of ink on every page that has a page number.)

It's not "Just for Perl"
The first edition contained a 100-page chapter devoted to Perl, so many who merely glanced at it assumed it was a book on Perl regular expressions instead of the general book on all regular expressions that it was. The "Perl blue" cover perhaps helped reinforce that idea. However, let me assure you that while the Second Edition does have a huge chapter devoted to Perl, it has 350 other pages on general and language-specific topics (and an additional 50 pages for the table of contents and the index). The cover is still "Perl blue", but like before, the content aims at all regular expressions.

Table of Contents
The table of contents is available online. The page is sort of large (about 110k -- but hey, it's a big book!). It'll give you a good feel for what the book does and doesn't cover.

Back-Cover Sales Blurb
Here's the back-cover copy that's supposed to get you excited about the book.

Check It Out at Your Library
Ask for it at your library. Its ISBN is 0-596-00289-0.

Already Have the Book?
Here are some things that might be useful.

Full Index
The full index is available in one large (about 250k) web page, suitable for searching via your browser's search function.
Errata
As a testament to the hard work I put in to this book, the first errata wasn't reported until the book had been out for over a full week :-) (By contrast, it took about five minutes for the first typo to be found in the first edition.) Now, a number of typos and boo-boos have been reported.
Links
• "Got egrep?" Where to get egrep
• "Got Java?" Regex packages for Java
Program and Data Listings
You can fetch program and data listings from one page, or from a range of pages.
Fetch listings from page

Fetch listings from pages through

Humor
You might find this cover spoof funny.

Thanks!
I couldn't do it alone. Here's a copy of the Personal Comments and Acknowledgments, lifted right from the book.

Also, thanks to Peak Web Hosting for this web space and fantastic site support.

just peeking