Rating:  - Thorough Regex book
This book is an invaluable resource. I learned more than I wanted to know about regex after reading this book. The authors breaks things down to the smallest detail and discusses each aspect. He covers regular expressions, their engines, their use, and some tips and tricks without losing the reader.
If you are just learning regex, I don't recommend this book - but if you know a little and want to take your regex to the next step, this is the book for you!
Rating: - Mastering Regular Expressions
I've corresponded personally with Jeffrey Friedl several times over the last few years, and I remember being at once impressed with his attention to detail and his focus. I was invited to be one of the technical review editors for this third edition of his authoritative book on Regular Expressions, but had to pass due to time constraints.
However, I am pleased to state that whoever the tech reviewers were, they did a thorough job on this one from O'Reilly. This book has matured over these three editions to become what I would consider the most detailed and valuable book about Regex on the planet - and that means whatever your favorite programming language or platform is.
You see, Regular Expressions is in itself a language, and transcends programming languages and platforms because the concepts are basically the same across all languages - whether it be Perl, JAVA, C#, Visual Basic, Javascript, PHP, Ruby, Python, TCL - you name it.
And this book focuses on the mastery of regex, not being a reference tool. Though each language has a different syntax for handling objects and methods, the underlying objects and methods are the same with Regex, so even complex examples shown in one language directly translate to the other languages.
Suffice to say that there are basic concept chapters that are really language - agnostic, and then specific sections on PHP, .NET, JAVA, and Perl. The book covers practical Regex techniques and most importantly, it gets you to the conceptual level where you can begin constructing Regex patterns on your own, without having to look for "examples".
For .NET developers, Jeffrey provides a complete table-based overview of .NET's Regular Expression flavor, with a focus on the new features available in .NET 2.0, including class subtraction, RegexOptions, and named capture.
In sum, let me just say that any developer who finds the need to manipulate text - whether it be scraping a web page, creating a report, importing data, or a hundred other applications, is going to need Regular Expressions. Jeffrey's book provides a complete and mature approach that is fresh, timely and detailed. I would recommend this book for any developer.
Rating: - RE: Third Edition
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The third edition just came out -- and that makes 10 years since this book was first published. That statistic alone indicates the steady value of "Mastering Regular Expressions" across the constant changes in applied software technology over that time. Regular expressions, still the most under-used power tool, needs a book like this.
Specifically, this third edition features enhanced coverage of PHP in the early tutorial chapters, plus an all new chapter devoted entirely to PHP regular expressions.
Also new in this edition, the Java chapter has been rewritten and expanded to reflect new features as Java itself has developed.
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Rating:  - Deep study of a deep subject
Regular Expressions are a powerful pattern matching process built into many programming languages (but often hidden and not fully exploited).
If you are verifying input from a form or analyzing an HTML page or engaged in any other sort of pattern matching, Regular Expressions are something you should master.
The problems addressed by this book are (a) regex is poorly documented in general and (b) it has grown up ad hoc: every language's implementation is different from every other, sometimes very different.
The book does a good job of documentation and explanation in the early chapters. But in the later chapters it falls prey to the problem it is trying to solve. If you use Perl or Java or VB.NET, then this book gives a lot of very important information not easily found elsewhere.
On the other hand, if you use PHP, MySQL or JavaScript (as I do) you have to look elsewhere for the advanced topics.
Rating:  - No summary or synopsis, only good for thorough detail.
Get the small pocket reference guide instead of this book! It is difficult to find what you want if you don't know exactly what you are looking for. I admit it covers the subject very well, but if you don't know Regular Expressions thoroughly, you have to read every word of the book or look forever to find what you want. Just buy the pocket reference guide and go to the library once a year when you need this thing.
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