Rating: 
Summary: Not a book for easy answers and examples
Review: A friend let me borrow this book while I was writing a Perl program to capture system statistics. I was hoping to have something with easy explanations and lots of examples, which this book does not provide. Buy it if you want to _MASTER_ REs, but look elsewhere if you need an intro first. Please note that I revised my rating to 4/5 because I admit that I expected the book to be something it wasn't intended to be, but with so few (if any?) intro books about REs on the market, I still think the author missed a chance to explain REs to newcomers.
Rating:
Summary: Language description..
Review: Regular expressions look nothing but regular, more often than not because of the idiosyncratic tool being employed. This book surveys the notation, presents techniques and gory details about the languages which support this notation.I was a casual user(mostly in scripts) before, but now have become more careful in regex construction. I found it a tad verbose, but I heartily recommend it for any programmer.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a GREAT book
Review: This is one of the best books I have read in a long time! It is packed and dense with information (plan on reading it at least twice). The examples are wonderful. This should be required reading for any serious Perl programmer (and very useful to programmers in other languages). Not only will this book teach you to be a regex expert, but it will teach you a lot of other stuff about Perl.
Rating:
Summary: The Zen of Regex
Review: This is the best computer book I've read. It has helped me understand PERL, but it's more than that... Regular Expressions deserve to be studied in their own right, as a stimulating mental exercise... even as a form of meditation (maybe that's going a bit too far). Euclid for the new millennium.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't fear the regular expression
Review: One of the most frustrating things about learning the perl language is learning to deal with its regular expressions. This book does a great job of explaining complicated examples and has challenging problem solving situations. It covers mostly input manipulation, searching and filtering, which are probably the most important aspects of regular expressions. I give it 3 stars is because its a tad bit on the wordy side. O'Reilly books useually do a good job of explaining things, but there were many details about regular expressions that I could have done without reading about. There is a consistant lack of examples throughout the book as well. If you are going to throw a lot of complicated technical information at the reader, it is a good idea to illustrate consepts no matter how big or small. I can't say anything else negative about the book though, because if you are struggling with regular expressions I would recommend that you get it. After a few chapters you will have a better understanding and be writing your own confusing perl regular expressions.
Rating:
Summary: Click the Button - Buy this Book!
Review: This is easily one of my most-used books. O'Reilly book are generally of the highest caliber, but this one ranks amongst the best of the best. It clearly handles the current state of regular expressions, something that many of my university classes haven't (they're still stuck in the morass of "pure" regexes). While the book is somewhat Perl centric, a host of other languages are addressed. If regular expressions have you baffled, or if you need to craft just the right regex for your application, this book is for you.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for experts++
Review: This book gives you an excellent and detailed understanding of the concept and the various dialects of regular expressions. Once understood you should be able to follow and develop regexes on any machine with any language supporting regexes. There are plenty of examples, teasing your knowledge and keeping you practicing. One of the best parts, I think, are dedicated to understand when a regex is (time-)efficient - and when it can not be. However, it may be too puzzling for beginners. E.g. if you started with Perl perhaps you'll find enough about Perl's implementation of regexes in Schwartz'&Christianses "Learning Perl" for a while.
Rating: 
Summary: this book needs an editor!
Review: On the internals of regular expression matching, this book is without equal. I found this book to be an excellent source of information on constructing efficient regexps in Perl. Unfortunately, this book is also without equal when it comes to *poorly* presenting information. The tables are unreadable -- visually impossible to decipher, cryptic, cluttered. Edward Tufte could use this as book as a prime example of how not to present information. And it's a shame, because there's a wonderful book buried inside Mastering Regular Expressions. If this book gets proper attention from an ORA editor, I could easily give it 5 stars. In its present form, it's nearly unusable -- 2 stars. --Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
Rating:
Summary: Don't Assume You Know About Regular Expressions...
Review: ...as I did just because I took "formal language" and "computation theory" courses at a university. I laughed when I first saw this book in a bookstore years ago, because I imagined the content must be so elementary. Until I actually started reading the book a few weeks ago, I thought all regex engines were essentially what this book refers to as "DFAs." As the author clearly explains, DFAs are "fast, consistent, and boring," while NFAs, the type of engine that most tools actually use, are more powerful but also much trickier to use.
The book focuses on using regexes to do useful tasks with real tools. The efficiency of the various types of regex engines is explained, since a slight change in a regex can cause several orders of magnitude slowdown with some engines.
While I do agree with the author that "DFA matching is boring", I wish the author had included some discussion of how a state machine can implement a DFA regex for some insight into how DFA engines work. I also wish there had been exercises at the ends of the chapters, in addition to the few questions and answers scattered throughout the book.
Rating:
Summary: Masterful. Thoughtful. Brilliant.
Review: One of the finest technical books I have read (out of hundreds). He has an extraordinary knowledge of Regular Expressions, and he has written a beautifully crafted book explaining the concepts. A true master craftsman, both in his understanding and his ability to explain. I look forward to more work from this excellent author.
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