Learn the basics of regular expressions (regex) and how to use them in JavaScript
what are regular expressions and what are they used for
regular expressions, often referred to as regex, is a pattern-matching syntax used for searching, extracting, and manipulating text based on patterns
it allows you to define a pattern or a set of rules that describe a specific sequence of characters or a textual structure
it is often used in programming to validate certain patterns such as email addresses, postal codes or custom syntax such as product ids
regular expressions are also used for searching, text extraction, text transformation and parsing of commands, e.g. when creating a computer language or compiler
what is the history of regex
regular expressions were being used as early as the 1950s and 1960s in computer science and linguistics
the grep command, introduced in Unix in the 1970s, allowed users to search for patterns using regular expressions
during the 1980s, regular expressions were included in many languages being developed such as C++ and Haskell
particularly the language Perl embraced regular expressions as a core feature
by 2000 nearly all major computer languages had support for regular expression, e.g. Python, Java and JavaScript
by the early 2000s all SQL variants had regular expression support
since then regular expressions have found adoption as a search option in non-developer tools such as Microsoft Excel/Word, Google Sheet/Documents and editors such as Notepad++