Regular Expressions

Today a quiz was distributed around at the client place I work to write an efficient program in RegEx to validate and fetch pieces from a specific String format. I had looked into Regular Expression for one of my projects earlier but did not really use it. I got inspired today after looking at the quiz to give it a try and was reading a bit. I found this link very useful and guess everyone would like it too.

http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/regex/

MathWorld defines Regular Expressions as follows:

Regular expressions define formal languages as sets of strings over a finite alphabet. Let denote a selected alphabet. Then is a regular expression that denotes the empty set and is a regular expression that denotes the set containing the empty string as its only element.
If , then is a regular expression that denotes the set whose only element is string . If and are regular expressions denoting sets and , then
1. is a regular expression denoting the set , where denotes the union.
2. is a regular expression denoting the set of all concatenations of and , where and .
3. is a regular expression denoting closure of , that is, the set of zero or more concatenations of strings from
The sets defined by regular expressions are called regular sets, and a set is regular iff it is defined by a right linear grammar.

The word "PraBhas" is a wonderful word in my life. It is Pradeepa who is me and Bhaskar who is just not better but my best half. I set out on look for a Telugu to English Dictionary on the web to translate the word Prabhas from telugu to know its meaning in English. From the results I ended up reading so much on Telugu. It was more interesting to read it as Telugu is my mother tongue and it made me knowledgeable about it. There is loads of information wealth in Wikipedia about this language and I think every Telugu enthusiast should read [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telugu] . This is a complete detour about what I was going to write so I am going to get back on track.

When I was in school my class teacher once made a comment in my progress report that I was lethargic. I, at that age of 12 or 13 (don't really remember) did not know the meaning of the word lethargy which was later clarified to me by my father (whom I dearly love) as "laziness" was aptly written according to me. Even now I think I have grown up with that habit mostly because of the pampering by my parents, brother, sister and for the past 5 years my dear husband. Being the youngest at home I guess you are born to be pampered ;-) Anyone who disagrees do write to me. I would love to hear it.

Anyways, getting back on track I want to break free from the shackles of laziness and try to something constructive. This is my first step towards it... I think I have lots to contribute, loads in my brain to be shared and talked about.

Keep looking for more posts from me. Do keep writing.

Ciao, have a great new day with full of joy!!!!