Having Trouble with Regex?
Regex is inhuman. Take a look at "^[a-zA-Z]([.]?([[:alnum:]_-]+)*)?@([[:alnum:]\-_]+\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$" and guess what it is. Even worse, there's minimum documentation on MSDN about what Regex is. Apparently Microsoft really steer away users from using this powerfull functions.
But fear not my friend, there's a useful yet free application that can help you through Regex creation, validation, and testing. It is called Expresso. Built by Ultrapico, this tool is invaluable to anyone doing any Regex.
The biggest help is it's library. OOB, it already contain a handful of Regex ready to use, you can even add more if you manage to create (or steal using Google) one. The next one is Regex visualization, or verbalization. Often, Regex keeps us wondering where is the block for this rule or what rule is that block for, etc, using Expresso, you can see the hierarchy of Regex and modify its parts. Of course, the hierarchy is complemented with verbal English to help you distinguish between exact, minimum, between, or maximum syntaces.
The original installation of Expresso valids for 30 days, and if you register (for free), you can have it unlimited! Have fun!
P.S.: Just in case you're wondering, the first Regex stands for e-mail address.