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Windows has wonderful tool working with regular expressions - RegexBuddy. It has two problems:

  1. It's commercial.
  2. It runs on Windows (Linux version no more available).

What tools (except grep) you use working with regular expressions on Linux?

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what do you need it to do that grep dosn't? – Jeremy French Jul 16 '09 at 11:58
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He's looking for a tool that can help debug regular expressions. – ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells Jul 16 '09 at 12:42
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13 Answers

up vote 7 down vote

See my answer to How do you write and test your regular expressions? on StackOverflow.

Don't use Regex Buddy, nor any similar tool.

Spend a bit of time learning how regular expressions work.

They are actually much simpler than people think.

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Yup: I give the same advice about software to check spelling. Just say no. Learn it. – Telemachus Jul 16 '09 at 12:47
Hmm, I'm less sure about spelling - there's a huge number of words, languages and grammar oddities to confuse people. Regular Expressions are incredibly simple compared to any human/spoken languages. – Peter Boughton Jul 16 '09 at 13:14
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Tools like Regex Buddy doesn't write regular expressions for you, so user still needs to learn them. But it helps write them, especially then expressions becomes quite big. – Pawka Jul 16 '09 at 14:04
@ Peter: I grant that spelling may be harder (for some people, some kinds of learners). Still, learn it. Software only gives you a false sense of security anyhow. Software can't spell well at all. – Telemachus Jul 16 '09 at 15:04
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Even if you don't need help, it can still be helpful. I know regular expressions quite well but I still like to use a graphical editor when I have one available. – David Zaslavsky Jul 16 '09 at 19:02
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up vote 7 down vote

I use Kiki, it's simple but does the job.

Written in Python and there's an ubuntu package named kiki.

enter image description here

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up vote 3 down vote

I usually use emacs with regex-tool. It get's the job done.

Here's someone's blog entry about it http://bc.tech.coop/blog/071103.html

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up vote 2 down vote

MonoDevelop includes a powerfull Regex tool. It includes a library of user submitted Regexes and a Regex tester.

The regex validator is System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.

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+1 since I reached my voting limit. – Diago Jul 16 '09 at 11:43
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I've just tried - it's nice. But I will not run another IDE only for regexps while I'm not developing Mono. – Pawka Jul 16 '09 at 11:51
TRue. Lucky me I'm a C# developer... oh wait... you can do other languages, not related to dotNet at all in MonoDevelop. C and C++ are quite well supported. More to come. (Ruby, Delphi, etc). – Dykam Jul 16 '09 at 11:58
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up vote 2 down vote

RegexBuddy is reported to run perfectly on Wine.

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Mr. Downvote, care to explain? – Robert Munteanu Jul 16 '09 at 12:52
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Yes, but it still commercial. – Pawka Jul 16 '09 at 13:55
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up vote 2 down vote

There is also Kodos http://kodos.sourceforge.net/

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up vote 1 down vote

Redet seems to be what you're looking for.

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up vote 1 down vote

Not software but website - Rubular

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up vote 1 down vote

txt2regex comes in handy sometimes.

By the way, for Windows, I like Regex Coach.

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up vote 1 down vote

There's an add-on for Firefox that I find handy for my not-to-onerous needs.

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up vote 0 down vote

Vim. Dynamically finds and highlights the first match for the regular expression as you type it.

I use this on Windows too, actually, for the same reason.

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You might find that vim's regexs are not entirely standard. In particular I'm thinking of + which you have to backslash to work as a "one or more" matcher, where in, err, regular regular expressions the backslash would escape it. – Evan Jul 17 '09 at 3:58
Evan's point is correct. The Q doesn't specify what the intended purpose of the regular expression is. I find that it's very easy to take a regex that works for me in Vim and apply it in other situations. There seem to always be variations in escaping and other syntax details between regex implementations anyway. – Zac Thompson Jul 17 '09 at 14:40
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up vote 0 down vote

I usually don't use any tools for this, but kregexpeditor seems to be worth mentioning. It has all the features you'd expect and the next version will even support backreferences.

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