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Sarah Saltrick Meyer: Two Problems: Regular Expressions for Revolutionaries | JSConf EU 2017

http://2017.jsconf.eu/speakers/sarah-saltrick-meyer-two-problems-regular-expressions-for-revolutionaries.html There’s an old software joke that goes: “Some people, when confronted with a problem, reach for regular expressions. Now they have two problems.” Regular expressions are a web developer’s best friend and worst nightmare. Sure, you’re glad someone posted the regex pattern for a phone number on Stack Overflow, but when the intern asked you to explain what a “capture group” was, you broke into a cold sweat. So is a “regex” the same thing as a regular expression? How are regular expressions implemented in JavaScript? And just what do Alan Turing and Noam Chomsky have to do with all of this?

May 6, 2017