Rating: 
Summary: Great book, worth [$$]
Review: As usual, appleman has produced a great book; and if you can stomach the massivly intense ego, this book will help you learn regular expressions.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Perspective
Review: I am a long time fan of Dan Appleman. What he did to bring the Windows API out of the closet and available to all of us journeymen developers was profound.That being said I'd like to suggest that Dan's book be the next book you buy after getting 'Visual Basic.Net Text Manipulation Handbook'.
Rating:
Summary: Another Perspective
Review: I am a long time fan of Dan Appleman. What he did to bring the Windows API out of the closet and available to all of us journeymen developers was profound. That being said I'd like to suggest that Dan's book be the next book you buy after getting 'Visual Basic.Net Text Manipulation Handbook'.
Rating: 
Summary: .NET Regex with no waiting
Review: I have used regular expressions on/off for many years but needed to get up to speed on the .NET version. This ebook that I bought from Amazon.com was just what I wanted/needed all without having to wait for shipping or drive to the book store. Great job.
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat disappointing
Review: I'm a bit disappointed in this book. I find regular expressions to be a challenging subject, and I was looking for a clear tutorial that would start with the basics and work its way up to more complex expressions. On that basis, I bought this book. The book's explanation of the basics are a bit thin for my tastes. For example, it jumps into groups and backreferencing on page 11, while I'm still struggling with more basic concepts. If you already 'get' regular expressions, this book is probably a good text. However, if you are struggling with the fundamentals, as I am, you may view its explanation as being weak.
Rating:
Summary: .NET Regex with no waiting
Review: I've followed Dan for a long time, and this isn't the first book of his I love. However, there isn't much in the VS.Net documentation that is even remotely intelligible. Dan comes up with great examples and explains everything very clearly. I had already had some exposure to them from reading Balena's book, so I could hit the ground running. However, even if you don't have the first clue of what a Regex is, this book can help you. Good books are cheap at any price, and considering how good and how cheap this book is, download it!
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Superb
Review: I've followed Dan for a long time, and this isn't the first book of his I love. However, there isn't much in the VS.Net documentation that is even remotely intelligible. Dan comes up with great examples and explains everything very clearly. I had already had some exposure to them from reading Balena's book, so I could hit the ground running. However, even if you don't have the first clue of what a Regex is, this book can help you. Good books are cheap at any price, and considering how good and how cheap this book is, download it!
Rating: 
Summary: I was looking for something better.
Review: If all I had wanted was an introduction to Regular Expressions in .NET, this book would have been fine, I guess. However, I had already learned quite a bit from Microsoft's documentation, and was hoping for a clear elucidation of a few points that MS had glossed over, to wit, how to use balancing expressions and alternating constructs, and also how to do some tricky things such as finding everything that doesn't match a given pattern, etc. Appleman indeed addresses the balancing expressions and alternating constructs in greater depth than the MS documentation, but his treatise is somewhat inadequate. He gives one elaborate example which uses both constructions, but fails to explain how to generalize from his example; and the regex pattern in his example itself, which is supposed to return the contents of successively nested parentheses, is not a general solution at all, but only works on a fairly narrow set of test cases. I think this stems from him having a less-than-profound understanding of regular expressions himself: he all but admits that he simply banged his head against the wall of Microsoft's documentation until he figured stuff out. Can't blame him for trying; this stuff is some of the most abstruse and dreadful stuff I've ever seen, in thirty years of professional programming. I just wish I could find something a bit more comprehensive (and comprehensible) from somebody who REALLY knows what the underlying interpreter/compiler does. All the better stuff that I've seen out there is unaware of the particulars of the .Net environment. Bottom line: since you can't get a refund on the e-book, save your money and re-read the Microsoft Stuff a few more times.
Rating:
Summary: Read this BEFORE the MS docs
Review: Initially I read the MS docs trying to understand Regex. This is definately NOT the way to start. I highly recommend this ebook first. After an hour with it I already a far greater understanding of using Regex and more importantly (for me) the Regex object hierarchy and how it fits together.
Rating:
Summary: Read this BEFORE the MS docs
Review: Initially I read the MS docs trying to understand Regex. This is definately NOT the way to start. I highly recommend this ebook first. After an hour with it I already a far greater understanding of using Regex and more importantly (for me) the Regex object hierarchy and how it fits together.
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