Join our book community on Discord
Regular expressions, commonly referred to as regex or regexp, are powerful tools used in software development to search for and manipulate text based on patterns. A regular expression is essentially a sequence of characters that defines a specific search pattern. This pattern can then be used to efficiently search, match, and manipulate strings of text within Swift code.
These patterns, constructed with literal characters, character classes, and quantifiers, among other elements, enable developers to express complex matching criteria concisely. From validating user inputs like email addresses and phone numbers to parsing structured data formats such as CSV files or log entries, regular expressions offer a very powerful solution. Regular expressions may seem a little confusing at first; however, once we start to use them, we begin to appreciate their efficiency and flexibility. With regular expressions, tasks that would...
