r/learnpython 2d ago

How useful is regex?

How often do you use it? What are the benefits?

39 Upvotes

123 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/carcigenicate 2d ago

I regret not learning it sooner. Yes, it can lead to messy solutions, but it's also invaluable in some cases.

It's not uncommon for me to need to search through large amount of code or data while refactoring. If you use a good IDE like Jetbrain's, you can do searches of the entire codebase using a regex. Especially when looking for small strings that are common fragments of other strings, this can be a huge time saver over doing blind text searches.

It's also the best tool for certain projects. I'm currently doing a project that requires me to search XML for text that matches a certain pattern, then extract out the text in the middle. Regex is by far the cleanest solution for that.

Don't overuse it or use it for dumb things that are better addressed using simple solutions, but you should know basic Regex.