Regex Hero Blog

Today I implemented a couple of improvements into Regex Hero. First we have a suggestion to allow the list of matched groups to be separated by tabs .  This allows you to copy and paste the groups directly into a spreadsheet application like Excel. Then  we have a suggestion to create cleaner code generation when IgnorePatternWhitespace is checked .  This essentially means that the regex string is divided into separate lines so that the comments are still at the end of each line, making the regular expression easier to follow.

Today I improved the way the textboxes scroll inside Regex Hero. Now they'll follow the cursor more like you expect when you're moving the cursor around with the arrow keys or Page Up & Down buttons. This was a request on GetSatisfaction that obviously needed some attention. And the other part of today's update is with the error message that'll appear below the regular expression box. It would overlap the regular expression textbox slightly and make it hard to navigate to the last line of text. So I've moved things around and that no longer happens.

Microsoft has not announced that they're working on Silverlight 6. And some people have asked me what I'm going to do about Regex Hero when Microsoft drops support for Silverlight. Well, there are certainly options and the options are always changing and evolving as new technologies are introduced. However, we do know that Microsoft has announced that they will support Silverlight 5 until October 12th, 2021 . In the meantime we'll likely see more and more attractive alternatives. And there's still the possibility that Microsoft will build a Silverlight 6 and extend the support for it even further. All said, the decision about Regex Hero's future codebase doesn't really have to be made today and we don't have to panic since we have at least another 8 years of Silverlight.

I upgraded Regex Hero to Silverlight 5 today.  The change is relatively minor overall.  One of the biggest reasons for the upgrade is the increased usage of 64-bit browsers.  And Silverlight 5 is the first version to support 64-bit browsers.

I fixed a couple bugs today.  One was reported this morning about the scrolling when you hit the previous / next match buttons .  The other was one I noticed where the replace textbox would trigger autocompletions in the regex box above it if you have an open backslash, parenthesis, or bracket.  This was pretty annoying and I've changed it so the regex autocompletions will only work when the regex textbox has focus.

All of these updates relate to the analyzer, so if you're not a Regex Hero Professional user, then this won't affect you. I received a report of an analysis bug  related to character classes.  The regex analyzer wouldn't handle opening brackets inside a character class properly. It's one of the finer details of the regular expression syntax.  You wouldn't think that [[abc] would be valid, but it is.  You don't have to escape the opening bracket inside the character class.  So now the analyzer interprets this as it should. I've also fixed bugs around interpreting the \x00 (hex), \u0000 (unicode), and \k<group>  (backreference) expressions. P.S. The major updates I mentioned recently are still in the works.  So the price for Regex Hero Professional is still $20 for now.

I'm working on some new features for Regex Hero, focusing primarily on bringing more advanced functionality to Regex Hero Professional . New Regex Hero Professional features in the works... The analyzer will give you the option of automatically formatting your regular expression with comments. The tool will analyze your regular expression and offer suggestions to improve the performance.  For instance, there's a performance penalty in using IgnoreCase.  And it's pointless to use it when there's nothing case-sensitive in your regular expression.  There are many other things it'll look for, and this is something that will evolve and improve with time. There will be various other things I'll be working on, but these are the big 2 features.  When all of this is released, I'll also be raising the price for the Professional edition to $30.   I never make customers pay for updates.  So if you're interested in the Professional edition, I'd sugges...

Today I released a minor update, fixing a couple bugs: "Redo" functionality now works as it should on a Mac via the Command-Shift-Z keyboard shortcut. I've added a group name warning.  There's a weird issue with the way the .NET Regex engine allows numeric entries in group names.  For instance (? abc)| (? def)  will not throw an error upon instantiation.  However, when you enumerate through the groups that's when you get a runtime error.  So I've added a rule to show a warning in this case that says, "Group names must begin with a word character, or if they're numeric they cannot have gaps between numbers."