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Rating: 
Summary: Too difficult to read
Review: As with a lot of the wrox press books ; they are incredibly difficult to read; both literally and physically!!!;
you can't keep a page open because the book spine is so tight that it keeps flipping shut.
The book should start at the beginning and work its way through but instead it jumps into the deepend drowning newer users.
Really found this book annoying and although it has a lot of content and usefull code the format and delivery make it ultimately a waste of money (my opinion.)
Rating: 
Summary: At last an inovative and unique book on Text Handling.
Review: Finally a publishing company (wrox publishing) has decided to do something very intelligent and useful in regards to VB.NET, by launching a series on specific topics that we developers are constantly banging our heads with. By reading VB.NET Text Handling I got a total different perspective for text manipulation techniques.
As the book starts with great introduction especially on chapter 2 about Strings and builders it broads the way you stop thinking about Strings as sophisticated wrapper classes from a primitive data type. I was also very pleasant with the way that leads me to demystify some "pluming" idiosyncrasies I got through out the years.
Chapter 5 introduces in a very transparent way how to start using Regular Expression where it glues so well with chapter 6 containing excellent applied approach for more complex uses of Regex.
I would definitely advise to watch for chapter 7 where very tricky tasks are well explained and exemplified such as various types of validation and HTML TAGS MANIPULATION BEYOND LIMITS.
If someone wants some actual information on how to put into practice commercial text manipulation I would recommend this book mostly because I will save hours of needless work
Rating:
Summary: This Book Is All Meat and No Bones (Thank-You Wrox!)
Review: Not only did this book live up to my expectations but it exceeded them. Wrox is really onto something with it's handbook series. It's what I've always looked for: a complete book on one subject that is all meat and no bones. In fact, I used to learn various programming techniques from Wrox's "Programmers Reference" series for this very reason: all meat, no bones. It's great having a book that doesn't spend hours explaining things the I already know and that gives me everything I need to know about the topic at hand. I've noticed on Amazon that there are several other books that fall into the Handbook series that are due out this year. I'm looking forward to them also. While this book would be good for the beginner, I found it great for the Intermediate programmer looking to understand all of the power of string handling new to .NET. In fact, this book starts of with a great, highly technical discussion on how .NET and other platforms handle strings. This discussion isn't used heavily through out the rest of book but makes for better programming practices and good geeky water-cooler discussions. From there, it's all very practical. The book explains just enough to make everything clear and avoids the all-too-common over-explaining that is a downfall of most computer books. I found myself re-reading the odd page 3 or 4 times to get the concept through my head. I would far rather do that then read a book that makes me want to pass out from boredom due to the massive over-explanation. Plus different programmers might re-read different pages due to different understandings. Believe me, it's all there and it's all presented well. And since the book is only, like, 230 pages long (plus the Appendices), it's awesome. It covers as much as a 1000 page book but it's all laid out and explained so much better. You can use the 80% time savings to actually use what you've learned (or make fun of your manager, which ever is more valuable to you). Lastly, this book is quite complete. Programming for different cultures and languages could honestly be a handbook in it's own right, but certainly this book gives you a great introduction and more. The regular expression coverage is a very completely introduction as is the string handling chapters at the beginning of the book. Oh, and the last chapter is like a regular expressions "Cook Book" with REALLY practical examples. This book is fantastic to use as a learning tool and just as fantastic to have on your bookshelf for reference. Seeing that text manipulation is the name of the game when it comes to data, this book isn't leaving my side. Check it out - you'll love it.
Rating: 
Summary: Note
Review: This book was sold by Wrox to APress. The code download is available directly from APress at http://support.apress.com.
Rating: 
Summary: Note
Review: Unless you are writing games for a living, YOU WILL be spending a lot of time manipulating text. I have a true love/hate relationship with using regular expressions but there is no argument about the sheer power they bring to a developer's workbench. This guide is very concise and is a `must have' reference book. Well organized and written. I don't know what's happening with it's publication. I got it from Amazon from a re-seller and I'm not quite sure if it's still being printed. I know that when I went to download the sample code I was redirected to another site. Whatever it's status is, don't miss out and get your copy now. I don't know of another reference for the .NET developer for text/string/regular expressions.
Rating:
Summary: Great Reference
Review: Unless you are writing games for a living, YOU WILL be spending a lot of time manipulating text. I have a true love/hate relationship with using regular expressions but there is no argument about the sheer power they bring to a developer's workbench. This guide is very concise and is a 'must have' reference book. Well organized and written. I don't know what's happening with it's publication. I got it from Amazon from a re-seller and I'm not quite sure if it's still being printed. I know that when I went to download the sample code I was redirected to another site. Whatever it's status is, don't miss out and get your copy now. I don't know of another reference for the .NET developer for text/string/regular expressions.
Rating:
Summary: Gary Chamberlain
Review: Wow! Quite impressed! I have been programming in VB, C and Java for years. This book is a concise explanation of strings with great history for perspective and detail about .NET implementation. This book reads very well and has great code examples. I suppose someone that doesn't know anything about programming shouldn't be trying to read a book about string encoding and regular expressions in the first place. This is not an introductoryto VB.net book (thank god!) If you are an intermediate or greater developer that is new to .NET then this book is a must read. I've seen so many VB developers hurt themselves with string concat in VB. This book explains why and how the .NET framework solves those problems. Regular Expressions is such a powerful tool. It is a shame that it took so many years for it to become part of the Microsoft arsenal. It has been used in Perl for decades. It behooves every programmer to learn about the following three topics... 1] The StringBuilder class
2] Interning Strings
3] Regular Expressions. Also, in the past, I have not been a big fan of wrox books. ..not sure why. I think, comparatively, they were hard to read. Even when reading topics that I thouroughly knew, I found the wording and layout less than ideal. It was probably just a bad group of editors. (There are even a few mispellings and mistakes in this book) However, I am a big fan of this new layout. Smaller books covering specific topics that you want to learn is the way to go. This book is great. Get it.
Rating:
Summary: Gary Chamberlain
Review: Wow! Quite impressed! I have been programming in VB, C and Java for years. This book is a concise explanation of strings with great history for perspective and detail about .NET implementation. This book reads very well and has great code examples. I suppose someone that doesn't know anything about programming shouldn't be trying to read a book about string encoding and regular expressions in the first place. This is not an introductoryto VB.net book (thank god!) If you are an intermediate or greater developer that is new to .NET then this book is a must read. I've seen so many VB developers hurt themselves with string concat in VB. This book explains why and how the .NET framework solves those problems. Regular Expressions is such a powerful tool. It is a shame that it took so many years for it to become part of the Microsoft arsenal. It has been used in Perl for decades. It behooves every programmer to learn about the following three topics... 1] The StringBuilder class
2] Interning Strings
3] Regular Expressions. Also, in the past, I have not been a big fan of wrox books. ..not sure why. I think, comparatively, they were hard to read. Even when reading topics that I thouroughly knew, I found the wording and layout less than ideal. It was probably just a bad group of editors. (There are even a few mispellings and mistakes in this book) However, I am a big fan of this new layout. Smaller books covering specific topics that you want to learn is the way to go. This book is great. Get it.
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