Regular expressions are a way of manipulating text strings, and we make use of their abilities in Leech, Name Mangler, and Usher. You don't have to know how to use regular expressions (often called regex) to use these apps, but they can help you do some pretty useful stuff. For example, you can rearrange parts of a filename in Name Mangler, based on matching patterns using a regular expression.

But regular expressions aren't necessarily the most user-friendly technology around—they have a language all their own which you really need to understand to use them well. There are countless sources to learning about regular experssions—there are full books on the subject, and countless web sites and videos posted online.

On Rob's personal blog, he gathered some of these sources together, and created a simple example—using Name Mangler—of how you can use a regular expression to manipulate text. The end result is an introductory blog post on the subject of regular expressions:

The little I know about regex…and where to learn more

f you're curious about learning more about regular expressions, you can start there—or with your favorite search engine; learn regular expressions will return a lot of matches.