Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Free regular expression addin for Visual Studio - Regular Expression Explorer

Visual Studio Gallery - Regular Expression Explorer

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RegEx Explorer is a visual studio addin which lets you create or modify regular expressions and test them with any text. Matches are highlighted by surrounding each with a red box. A dropdown list of suggestions is available with choices for email, GUID, URL, etc. Any pattern you create can be added to the suggestion list. Existing suggestions can be removed by pressing DEL on a selected name.

Checkboxes are available for Ignore Case, Multiline and to auto-add or remove a ^$ wrapper. Patterns can be saved to be future suggestions. Patterns can be copied to the clipboard with a button press for pasting into your code. Matches are displayed in real-time as you type.

This add-in is offered for free, but donations are welcome if you like the utility. Also, please report any issues or make suggestions for changes.

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Just a bit ago I was looking for some RegEx help, just something to play with different RegEx expressions, something built into my “day in and out work console” (aka Visual Studio ;)

This tool is just what I was looking for…

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5 comments:

Bobfox said...

It does not show up in VS 2008 after installation.
Maybe incompatible with Win 7.

Here is an OSS RegExEditor for VS 2010:
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/55c24bf1-2636-4f94-831d-28db8505ce00

Tom Faust said...

Actually I developed this with VS 2008 on Windows 7 and don't have any problems with the install. I'm not sure what problem Bobfox is having but I'd be happy to explore it.

Greg said...

I just installed it on Win7 x86 (RTM) and I'm seeing it right there at the top of the VS2008 Tools menu (like in the bitmap in the post above)...

So no-repro for me. :)

Bobfox, head on over to Tom's sites (http://www.faustware.com/ & http://tomfaust.blogspot.com/) and give him a ping (http://www.faustware.com/Contact.aspx) ...

Shane Tolmie said...

Awesome, awesome utility. Would love to see a Visual Studio 2010 version!

Tom Faust said...

I just wanted to point out that I posted a new version which supports Visual Studio 2010. It's available in the gallery or on my website

Thanks for the support!