Regular Expressions

Many Saturdays are now study days.  And today was no exception.  It isn’t over by a long chalk.

I have two rules to stop myself losing concentration.  Firstly that is to study in either 30 minute or 1 hour chunks, taking a 15 or 30 minute break from studying afterwards.

There is no point in studying when I’m losing concentration.  If I’m coding, I can go a lot longer without needing a break.

Secondly and I will get onto the subject shortly, I like to mix up what I am studying.  I started the day gently, reading about virtual reality coding in Web Designer magazine.  Then I dived back into the Bonfires on Free Code Camp, which really are quite taxing for the brain.

I spent about 2 hours on just 3 bonfire challenges, and one repeated source of confusion for me was the use of regular expressions.  It expected me to use them, without ever having taught me them.  I hadn’t done any kind of tutorial on them, though I had read about them so was aware of their existence.

Cue a bit of Googling, and a touch of procrastination, I found RegexOne.  15 lessons on regular expressions, with a task on each one to be able to progress to the next one.  Followed by some additional challenges which I am about to do.

Interactive online tutorials are for me the best way to learn – and though I am not going to be writing long regular expressions off the top of my head tomorrow, I now do have an understanding, and also a good resource to refer back to when I’m next challenged on regular expressions.

Do you have any other sources to practice regular expressions?

Time to go make my salad…[\leaves+oil\tomatoes+bacon]