Introduction

Regex Studio is a development environment for .Net regular expressions designed to make the creation, editing and testing of regular expressions easy. Numerous features aid in easing regular expression development, including: Syntax Highlighting, Tool tips, The Analyzer, Dynamic Help, The Expression Builder, Regex Code Generator (supporting C#, VB.Net, ASP.NET, MC++ and C++/CLI), dedicated regex Assembly Compilation, The Gallery and the testbed allows for tweaking of all regex options.

Syntax Highlighting

The user interface supports syntax highlighting, thereby making it easier to view complex regular expressions. Tooltips show what parts of a regular expression expand out to. Keyboard tooltips alert you when syntactically incorrect regular expressions have been typed. The analyzer dynamically breaks down your entire regular expression and describes what each part means.

Dynamic Help

The user interface allows you to use the graphical interface to select regular expression options. Dynamic help quickly provides constant information at all times about how the environment works, because the last thing you need to do is learn another development environment.

Testing

The test facility allows you to type sample text and see how the regular expression would work. It supports the three modes of .Net regular expressions: match, replace and split. To ensure you never lose your important work, the history list keeps a complete history of all text you type. At anytime, you can easily go back to a previously entered regular expression.

The Gallery

The Gallery feature allows you to choose from a number of predefined regular expressions, thereby making it much easier to start from known, working regular expressions. The Library feature allows you to store your own regular expressions in the Gallery. The Print option will print out all the information about your regular expression, including analyzer output, so you will know exactly how it works.

Code Generator

Once you are done creating, editing and testing your regular expression, the code generator takes care of creating the code required to use the regular expression in your application. It supports C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, Managed C++ (used in Visual Studio 2002/2003) and C++/CLI (in Visual Studio 2005).


Dedicated Regex Assembly Creation

For advanced users, Regex Studio allows you to compile you own regular expression assemblies. This is a little-known feature of .Net which allows you to pre-compile your especially complex regular expressions in an assembly. You then access the assembly through a reference, just as you would any other assembly. The beauty is that, being an assembly, it has already been compiled, and will operate as optimum speed.


Requirements

Regex Studio requires the .Net 2.0 common language run time.