Oracle Regular Expressions Pocket Reference Book Review

Tutorial and Quick Reference

Regular expressions have long since been available in languages such as PHP and Perl and are now available with Oracle 10g.

If you are new to the concept of regular expressions, they allow you to match text in a more in depth nature than just using =’’ or LIKE ‘%%’, you can perform in-depth pattern matching using regular expression syntax.

If you are not familiar with Regular Expressions and you’re using Oracle then this pocket reference is essential. Even if you already know about regular expressions and the POSIX standard then there are sections in this pocket reference to indicate the key differences between he regular expression implementation in Perl and Oracle.

The pocket reference is well laid out and easy to follow with a beginning tutorial section to explain the basics of regular expressions which leads onto a regular expression quick reference section, then oracle regular expression functions, such as REGEXP_INSTR, REGEXP_SUBSTR and REGEXP_LIKE and finally regular expression error messages.

Although this pocket reference seems very thin at only 60 pages, don’t let that fool you. This pocket reference covers all areas of Regular Expressions in Oracle and once you have finished reading it you should know everything there is to know about regular expressions.

Oracle Regular Expressions is a worthy addition to the O’Reilly Pocket Reference collection.