Rating:  - Need to get to speed quickly? This is a good start...
While the various websites give a lot of good information on regular expressions, they don't show enough about building them from scratch. This book does a great job of laying a good foundation and then helping the reader understand how to build expressions from there.
Rating:  - Great book to learn about Regular Expressions.
If you want to learn the ins and outs of how a regular expression really works, this book does a great job explaining all the syntax, intricacies, optimization, greedy match, and non-greedy match. I highly recommended for those who writes a lot of regular expression.
Rating:  - Don't call me a reference book
I found other books much more helpful on solving a sticky regular expression problem. The author himself sums up his attitude towards users who want to find the solution fast without reading his 'story'
"Readers familiar with regular expressions might feel that they can immediately begin using this book as a detailed reference, flipping directly to the section on their favorite utility. I would like to discourage that."
So, for anyone with a problem and you think your are going to flip to a section and solve it, sorry, the author says he discourages that and you must read his story first.
"To get the most out of this book, read it as a story first".
I would rather have an experienced expert focus on creating a book to solve problems, not show me how smart he is. And reference books should be writen as reference books and leave the stories to Tom Clancy.
Rating: - Comprehensive Guide to Regular Expressions
Most computer programmers have heard of regular expressions, discussed in hushed tones and conjuring images of Unix gurus and their incomprehensible commands and godlike mastery of their systems, yet few actually know enough about regular expressions or how they work to do more than a simple word match using one, if that.
This book covers regular expressions from top to bottom in great and exhaustive detail, including the hows and whys of performance and supported features between the different engines that process them. Though geared mainly toward Perl, the examples and text will apply to nearly any system that provides support, from PHP to ASP to Python.
The text is fairly dense and is not exactly geared toward the novice programmer, though. I've had classes in Finite State Machines and still had to really apply my grey matter in a few spots to understand everything being discussed. However, the understanding the reader gains upon completion of the text is invaluable and will expand one's programming potential exponentially.
The one real lack of the book is a good overview and quick-reference card, but on the whole, the book is a good selection from the O'Reilly library and well worth the read of any serious programmer.
Rating: - Friedl once again wrote the ultimate book on the subject
Regular Expressions are a powerful tool, but not a topic that easily lend itself to a light reading. Notwithstanding the author's very informal writing style and genuine enthusiasm, a few sections can be dry or even cryptic (especially for beginners). Anyway, Friedl once again wrote the ultimate book on the subject, with an intimate knowledge of Regular Expressions, an outstanding attention to every detail and a huge amount of useful and relevant examples. Compared to the previous edition it covers new features but also expand on a broader range of programming languages, with dedicated chapters for Perl, Java and .NET; PHP, Phyton and Ruby get some coverage as well
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