So You Want to Learn Regular Expressions?

Herein you will find a series of articles aimed at helping the non technical person understand what Regular Expressions are, how and when to use them and hopefully help to get into the mindset of using the darn things!

The main focus has been on helping non technical people, mainly business and marketing, use Regular Expressions in Web Analytics tools like Google Analytics and others.

All the articles to date have been based on emails between Robbin Steif from Lunametrics and myself. With a little bit of "helping the developers at work" sneaking in now and then too.

What and How?
Wherein we look at What a Regular Expression actually is, and How they basically work.

Wild Cards
A starting look at the use of wildcards. Ways to find lots of stuff.

Positioning
Finding stuff is good. Being able to specify where stuff may be found is better.

More Wild Cards
More ways to find lots of stuff.

Just Like a Box of Chocolates
The Ultimate Analogy. Single choices from between Square Brackets.

Choices, Choices, Choices....
Exposing bigger choices: Err... Or.

Examples:
Filtering IP Addresses
Wherein I bore the reader to tears explaining how to RegEx for IP Addresses.

Enjoy! Feedback is more than welcome. Positive, Negative, Critical or just oodles of effusive gushing praise.