Regexpert helps you develop regular expressions for Microsoft C# and Visual Basic.NET. Writing regular expressions can sometimes be pretty tedious – let Regex help you define them and make your development process easier. The plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 integrates Regexpert directly into your development environment. Or you can choose to use Regexpert as a stand-alone tool.
Tip: Regexpert encourages the use of shortcuts. Make sure you print a copy of the tool’s shortcuts table.
Change the way you work with regular expressions, try Regexpert!
The Most Important Features
Regexpert Visual Designer (Regex Tree)
The regex tree enables you to design regular expressions without typing a single line of regex code. You can create all regular expression constructs by right-clicking the regex tree window. The tool enables you to create complex regular expressions without having in-depth knowledge of the regular expression syntax. By right-clicking a regex item in the tree, you can easily change properties or even add comments, which further simplifies your work with regular expressions.
Additional functions like "Surround with..." and "Change to..." help you modify existing regex-constructs.
Regex Editor and Syntax Highlighting
If you still want to type your regular expressions the old way, syntax highlighting makes working with regular expressions considerably easier. Matching parentheses are also highlighted (in a matter similar to that of Visual Studio) when you hover over them. This facilitates the navigation. And when you not sure what a regular expression really does, just move the mouse pointer over it and look for its human-readable translation.
Additional Editing Areas for Processing of Parts of Regular Expressions
This unique feature helps you process regular expressions with considerable ease. You can select a sub-region within a regular expression and open it in a dedicated editing area. You just have to move the mouse cursor next to a parenthesis and hit F2 to open the sub-region enclosed within the matching pair of parentheses in a separate editing area. You can choose the caption of the new editing area freely. All modifications made in additional editing areas are reflected on-the-go in the major editor.
Snippets
Frequently used structures can be inserted as code snippets in a matter familiar to that in Visual Studio. A named capture, for instance, also supports the surround-with function known from Visual Studio. This makes it possible to select a text region and insert a code snippet. Regexpert takes care of inserting the selected text correctly into the code snippet, e.g. injecting it between the parentheses in the case of a capture.
Needless to say, the snippet collection is fully extensible to suit you needs, as the snippet XML structure is fully compatible to the snippet format of Visual Studio 2005!
Replace Dialog
As you may expect, syntax highlighting also works in the replace dialog. Only expressions that are valid within the active regular expression are highlighted. Hit $ in the replace dialog to open an Intellisense list of all possible substitutions. Named groups are listed automatically based on the active regular expression. There is also a description to every common substitution as a tooltip to help you make your choice faster.
Matching
The match tree shows you what regions of the input text match the regular expression. Click on a tree node to automatically highlight the matching regions in the text. Figuring what the matches of a regular expression are is only a click away.
Look to the left of the input text area to see what percentage of every text line matches your regular expression. Any non-matching lines are marked by a red zero, giving you immediate feedback on what lines are not matched by your regular expression. If a new line is matched, an additional new-line symbol is shown next to the line’s matching percentage.
Replace
The replacing feature writes the input text area’s contents to the output text area using the Regex.Replace() method. All differences are marked on the left-hand side of every text area. Red dots are shown only in the input area to indicate a removed line. Green dots mean inserted lines, whereas green-red dots label modified lines in the output area.
Templates
You can also save templates to reuse regular expressions with their associated options and input text. When you use the plug-in for Visual Studio, you can also insert these regular expressions as code snippets in C# and Visual Basic.NET. Just type "regex" and the template name of your choice followed by two tabs. Or pick your snippet from the list of Regexpert snippets by right-clicking to open the context menu and choosing "Insert snippet", "My snippets", "Regexpert Snippets". The list includes all saved templates.
Dockable Windows in Visual Studio 2005 Style. Use window docking to have all important windows at a glance, and hide everything you do not need at any instance and show it again easily as soon as you need it.
You can control-tab through open documents and use shortcuts for all major windows (see the tool’s shortcut table.