Scripts and Programming

If you don't use regular expressions yet, you will discover in this book a whole new world of mastery over your data. If you already use them, you'll appreciate this book's unprecedented detail and breadth of coverage. If you think you know all you need to know about regular expressions, this book is a stunning eye-opener.

As this book shows, a command of regular expressions is an invaluable skill. Regular expressions allow you to code complex and subtle text processing that you never imagined could be automated. Regular expressions can save you time and aggravation. They can be used to craft elegant solutions to a wide range of problems. Once you've mastered regular expressions, they'll become an invaluable part of your toolkit. You will wonder how you ever got by without them.

Yet despite their wide availability, flexibility, and unparalleled power, regular expressions are frequently underutilized. Yet what is power in the hands of an expert can be fraught with peril for the unwary. Mastering Regular Expressions will help you navigate the minefield to becoming an expert and help you optimize your use of regular expressions.

Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition, now includes a full chapter devoted to PHP and its powerful and expressive suite of regular expression functions, in addition to enhanced PHP coverage in the central "core" chapters. Furthermore, this edition has been updated throughout to reflect advances in other languages, including expanded in-depth coverage of Sun's java.util.regex package, which has emerged as the standard Java regex implementation.Topics include:

• A comparison of features among different versions of many languages and tools
• How the regular expression engine works
• Optimization (major savings available here!)
• Matching just what you want, but not what you don't want
• Sections and chapters on individual languages

Written in the lucid, entertaining tone that makes a complex, dry topic become crystal-clear to programmers, and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition offers a wealth information that you can put to immediate use.

Reviews of this new edition and the second edition:

"There isn't a better (or more useful) book available on regular expressions."
--Zak Greant, Managing Director, eZ Systems

"A real tour-de-force of a book which not only covers the mechanics of regexes in extraordinary detail but also talks about efficiency and the use of regexes in Perl, Java, and .NET...If you use regular expressions as part of your professional work (even if you already have a good book on whatever language you're programming in) I would strongly recommend this book to you."
--Dr. Chris Brown, Linux Format

"The author does an outstanding job leading the reader from regex novice to master. The book is extremely easy to read and chock full of useful and relevant examples...Regular expressions are valuable tools that every developer should have in their toolbox. Mastering Regular Expressions is the definitive guide to the subject, and an outstanding resource that belongs on every programmer's bookshelf. Ten out of Ten Horseshoes."
--Jason Menard, Java Ranch

Beginning PHP 5 and MYSQL: From Novice to Professional offers a comprehensive introduction to two of the most popular Web application building technologies on the planet: the scripting language PHP and the MySQL database server. This book will not only expose you to the core aspects of both technologies, but will provide valuable insight into how they are used in unison to create dynamic data-driven Web applications.

Beginning PHP 5 and MYSQL explains the new features of the latest releases of the world's most popular Open Source Web development technologies: MySQL 4 database server and PHP 5 scripting language. This book explores the benefits, extensive new features, and advantages of the object-oriented PHP 5, and how it can be used in conjunction with MySQL 4 to create powerful dynamic Web sites.

This is the perfect book for the Web designer, programmer, hobbyist, or novice that wants to learn how to create applications with PHP 5 and MySQL 4, and is a great entrance point for Apress's extensive spectrum of PHP books planned for 2004.

The new edition covers MySQL 5.0 and its powerful new features, as well as the older but still widespread MySQL 4.1. One major emphasis of this book is how to use SQL to formulate queries for particular kinds of questions, using the mysql client program included in MySQL distributions. The other major emphasis is how to write programs that interact with the MySQL server through an API. You'll find plenty of examples using several language APIs in multiple scenarios and situations, including the use of Ruby to retrieve and format data. There are also many new examples for using Perl, PHP, Python, and Java as well.

Other recipes in the book teach you to:

• Access data from multiple tables at the same time
• Use SQL to select, sort, and summarize rows
• Find matches or mismatches between rows in two tables
• Determine intervals between dates or times, including age calculations
• Store images into MySQL and retrieve them for display in web pages
• Get LOAD DATA to read your data files properly or find which values in the file are invalid
• Use strict mode to prevent entry of bad data into your database
• Copy a table or a database to another server
• Generate sequence numbers to use as unique row identifiers
• Create database events that execute according to a schedule
• And a lot more

MySQL Cookbook doesn't attempt to develop full-fledged, complex applications. Instead, it's intended to assist you in developing applications yourself by helping you get past problems that have you stumped.

• Supported metacharacters for each language API
• Regular expression classes and interfaces for Ruby, Java, .NET, and C#
• Regular expression operators for Perl 5.8
• Regular expression module objects and functions for Python
• Pattern-matching functions for PHP and the vi editor
• Pattern-matching methods and objects for JavaScript
• Unicode Support for each of the languages

Instead of starting at "Hello World," Wicked Cool PHP assumes that you're familiar with the language and jumps right into the good stuff. After you learn the FAQs of life-the most commonly wished for PHP scripts-you'll work your way through smart configuration options and the art of forms, all the way through to complex database-backed scripts.

Wicked Cool PHP contains a wide variety of scripts to process credit cards, check the validity of email addresses, template HTML, and serve dynamic images and text. The 76 easily implemented scripts will also teach you how to: