Once, when I picked up a book from the local library, the librarian asked to tell her what I thought about the book when I would bring it back. Well, why not write a few lines about all the books I read so everybody could see what I thought about it? I'm often also happy to have friends recommend a certain book or tell me this and that is not really worth reading. I won't comment about the tons of books I have read so far, but about books I read from now on.
| highly recommended | sehr empfohlen | |
| good reading | gutes lesematerial | |
| average | durchschnittlich | |
| not too interesting | nicht allzu interessant | |
| recommended not to read it | empfehlung das buch nicht zu lesen |
 |
|
|---|---|
| title | Regular Expression Puzzles
and AI Coding Assistants |
| author | David Mertz |
| ISBN-10 | 1-63343-781-7 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-63343-781-4 |
| ASIN | |
| rating | |
| date | 2023-Dec-03 |
You hate regular expressions? Don't ever touch this book.
You want to learn how to use regular expressions? Use another book (for example, Jeffrey Friedl's excellent "Mastering Regular Expressions") and maybe come back to this book later.
You like to solve regular expression challenges? This is what you are looking for.
This is quite a unique book. First of all, there are not too many books dealing specifically with regular expressions; this one does so exclusively. Second, it is a book full of challenges for the reader. The author calls them "puzzles" and there are 24 of them. Some are related to the previous ones, so it's not 24 completely distinct challenges. And third, it picks up the buzz of the time when it was written: AI (Artificial Intelligence). Each challenge is also presented to AI engines and their proposed solutions are analyzed.
The cover has a handy overview of the most important regex patterns. The appendix sports a short introduction of regex patterns. The main part of the book is the puzzles and uses python and its "re" package.
If you want a short regex reminder before diving in to the challenges, it is best to start with the appendix. If you are new to regular expressions, the appendix can serve a a short introduction. But it is nowhere complete or thorough (and neither intended to be so). If you are after something to practice and improve your existing regex knowledge, this book may be a good choice. And if you are looking for some fun with regex challenges, "Regular Expression Puzzles and AI Coding Assistants" is an excellent choice.
What is especially interesting with this book, too, is the sometimes clever way AI produces code to solve the problems at hand and how, at other times, it utterly fails to do so but quite boldly boasts a so called "solution".
