Regular Expression (Regex)
Regular Expression (Regex) is a sequence of characters that defines a search pattern, used for string matching, validation, and text manipulation in programming. It provides a concise and flexible means to match, extract, or replace text based on specific patterns, such as email addresses, phone numbers, or keywords. Regex is implemented in most programming languages and tools, enabling tasks like data parsing, input validation, and log analysis.
Developers should learn Regex for tasks involving text processing, such as validating user inputs (e.g., emails or passwords), searching and extracting data from logs or documents, and performing find-and-replace operations in code or files. It is essential in data cleaning, web scraping, and configuration file parsing, where pattern-based matching improves efficiency and accuracy over manual string handling.