Ben Forta 
Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes [PDF ebook] 

Reg Ex is supported in all major development environments (for use in editing and working with code) and will thus appeal to anyone using these tools. In addition, every Java Script developer should be using Reg Ex, but most don’t as it has never been taught to them properly before. Developers using ASP, C#, Cold Fusion, Java JSP, PHP, Perl, Python, and more can (and should) be using Reg Ex, and so every one of them is a potential reader too. The reader of this book will learn how to: Match characters sets Match repeating characters (using minimums and maximums if needed) Match (or ignore) based on case Build sub-expressions Use all of the special characters Work with excape sequences Use POSIX classes to simplify complex expressions Use back-references Use look-behind operators Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes is a tutorial book organized into a series of easy-to-follow 10-minute lessons. These well targeted lessons teach you in 10 minutes what other books might take hundreds of pages to cover. Instead of dwelling on syntax, terminology, and arcane examples and scenarios, this book takes a very hands-on approach to solving the needs of the majority of Reg Ex users who simply need to manipulate data.