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The term regular expression refers to a special way of defining, searching for, and
modifying patterns in text. At the simplest level, you can think of a regular
expression as being simply a literal piece of text, like the characters in the
word ``cat'' or the string ``0.0''. At a more complex level, they
describe patterns such as ``the word 'cat' followed by one or more blanks,
followed by any word ending in the string 'ed' ''. Regular expressions are found
in many programs, with varying capabilities, but the implementation of regular
expressions in perl is considered by most people to be the best and most complete.
Perl provides operators to let you check to see if a regular expression occurs in
a particular piece of text, as well as to modify the text based on the presence
of a regular expression. While it takes some time to fully appreciate and use all
the features of regular expressions found in perl, you can start using simple
regular expressions in your perl programs right away, and learn the complexities
of regular expressions over time.
Next: Operators to Work with
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Phil Spector
2002-10-18