Inspiration: When I learnt Java last semester, I fell in love with its incredibly useful, versatile regular expressions. Unfortunately, most of my classmates found them to be too intimidating to use. At the same time, I realised that, whenever I constructed a regular expression, I went through a fairly constant mental process each time.
This Java app is my attempt to let others benefit from that process, without having to know any Java whatsoever, and in doing so redeem my favourite part of Java!
Target Audience: Java programmers -- primarily beginners, although this app will be quite handy for professionals as well.
Features: Requires no prior Java knowledge. Uses the Java Swing GUI to display multiple options, written in a simple, easy to understand manner. Displays the regex, as it is constructed at each stage, to let users see how their English-language choices translate into Java regex syntax in real-time. At the end, displays the 'raw' regex as it is interpreted by the Java compiler (i.e. without any escaped backslashes), as well as another version meant for easy copy-and-paste into String variables (i.e. with escaped backslashes). After constructing the regex, has a simple testing environment where the user can quickly and easily test out the regex on sample input of his/her choice.
Features if time permits / Future Extensions: Expand to cover different languages' regex syntax, either via separate apps or within this app itself.
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