This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Scott Watermasysk. Original Post: Another one for the toolbox: Regex Coach Feed Title: ScottW's ASP.NET WebLog Feed URL: /error.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/blog/rss.aspx Feed Description: ASP.NET and Blogging Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Scott Watermasysk Latest Posts From ScottW's ASP.NET WebLog

Darren wrote about a pretty interesting regular expression tool, “Regex Coach” (I wonder what I have downloaded more of this year, Regex tools or aggregators?).

Two features Darren highlighted are:

• Parse Tree View : apparently it gives you a regex engine view of things
• Step Through Mode : allows you to identify really quickly where backtracking is occurring.

Listed on the Regex Coach site:

The Regex Coach is a graphical application for Linux and Windows which can be used to experiment with (Perl-compatible) regular expressions interactively. It has the following features:

• It shows whether a regular expression matches a particular target string.
• It can also show which parts of the target string correspond to captured register groups or to arbitrary parts of the regular expression.
• It can "walk" through the target string one match at a time.
• It can simulate Perl's split and s/// (substitution) operators.
• It tries to describe the regular expression in plain English.
• It can show a graphical representation of the regular expression's parse tree.
• It can single-step through the matching process as performed by the regex engine.
• Everything happens in "real time", i.e. as soon as you make a change somewhere in the application all other parts are instantly updated.