Introduction to Regular Expressions (Regex)

Date: 11 November 2024

Regular expressions are used to find “strings” in text documents. Strings are sequences of characters, and regular expressions excel at finding them. If you need to find anything beyond exact character matches with or without general case insensitivity, then it is time to consider leaving behind standard tools for finding text and embracing regular expressions. In particular, regular expressions excel at finding patterns of characters within text. It can be applied to many applications and programming languages.

Technical requirements: if you are on Windows, we recommend that you install Git for Windows (instructions here). Linux and macOS already have their own terminal.

These are introductory, beginner-level sessions. No prior experience or knowledge is required. The workshop leverages lessons from Library Carpentry, part of the larger Carpentries community that teaches researchers worldwide foundational coding and data science skills.