What Is a Regular Expression, Regexp, or Regex?

A regular expression is a special text string for describing a search pattern. You can think of regular expressions as wildcards on steroids. You are probably familiar with wildcard notations such as *.txt to find all text files in a file manager. The regex equivalent is .*\.txt.

But you can do much more with regular expressions. In a text editor like EditPad Pro or a specialized text processing tool like PowerGREP, you could use the regular expression \b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,6}\b to search for an email address. Anyemail address, to be exact. A very similar regular expression can be used by a programmer to check if the user entered a properly formatted email address. In just one line of code, whether that code is written in Perl, PHP, Java, a .NET language or a multitude of other languages.

Since "regular expressions" is a mouthful, you will usually find the term abbreviated as "regex" or "regexp". We prefer "regex", since it can be easily pluralized as "regexes".

What is a regular expression in programming?

Short for regular expression, a regex is a string of text that allows you to create patterns that help match, locate, and manage text. Perl is a great example of a programming language that utilizes regular expressions.

Save Time and Effort with Regex's Basically, a regular expression is a pattern describing a certain amount of text. That makes them ideally suited for searching, text processing and data validation. Searching with regular expressions enables you to get results with just one search instead of many searches. Searching for the word "separate" and all of its common misspellings is easy with the regex s[ae]p[ae]r[ae]te. If you forgot the phone number of your friend who moved to Anguilla, search your past correspondence for \b1?[-( ]*264[-) ]*\d{3}[- ]*\d{4}\b and get a handy list of all phone numbers in area code 264, regardless of the notation style used. Update large amounts of data by searching and replacing with regular expressions. The benefit of using regular expressions to update data is that with a single regex pattern, you can dynamically update a variety of data. E.g. search for (copyright +(©|\(c\)|©) +\d{4})( *[-,] *\d{4})* and replace with \1-2014 to update all copyright statements to 2014, regardless of the style of copyright symbol and the current copyright year. "copyright (c) 1996-2002" is replaced with "copyright (c) 1996-2014", while "Copyright © 2009" is replaced with "Copyright © 2009-2014", etc. This takes only a few minutes to set up and a dozen seconds to run with RegexBuddy's built-in GREP tool. Imagine making those changes by hand.

Auto Gliding: Making Self-Decision on Air

Microsoft develops their auto pilot system (Auto gliders) by using Artificial Intelligence. While other competitors developing self-driven cars, Microsoft recently conducted a successful test flight of their auto pilot system (Auto gliders) which can take decision during the flight.

Indian-origin researcher Ashish Kapoor, head researcher of Microsoft leading his team in Microsoft’s autonomous sky glider project and the team already designed two self-navigated gliders and tested them. (New York Times)

The report also said that “"Guided by computer algorithms that learned from onboard sensors, predicted air patterns and planned a route forward, these gliders could seek out thermals - columns of rising hot air - and use them to stay aloft.”"

Actually Microsoft has planned to develop auto-gliders that are able to fly on the air for hours or even days with the minimal use of power. Microsoft also plan to use the gliders in scientific research to help the scientists to monitor weather patterns, crops, delivering products and even delivering internet into certain areas where it is not available.  

According to Mykel Kochenderfer, Stanford University professor of aeronautics and astronautics, Microsoft's project is a step towards self-driving vehicles "that are nimble enough to handle all the unexpected behavior that human drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians bring to public roads".

"With a glider, you can test these algorithms with minimal risk to people and property," Kochenderfer was quoted as saying.

In the Nevada desert, the team led by Kapoor launched two gliders with help from a hand-held remote control.

Once airborne, the gliders were left to their own devices. They were forced to fly with help from the wind and other air patterns.

With the help of algorithms, the gliders analysed the activities surrounding them and then changed directions as need be. They learned from their environment and made educated guesses.

Microsoft wanted to set record with the flight but after two days of trial, due to problems with radios and other equipment, it did not happen.Using similar methods, google has built high-altitude Internet balloons that can stay aloft for months on end. Several companies, including tesla, Google, uber and apple are designing cars that can not only drive on their own but also keep people in the surrounding safe.

 

AI Experts Warn the UN About Killer Robots 

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