《Mastering Regular Expressions,3rd》（以下简称《MRE3》）这本书的中译版也要上市了，中文名叫《精通正则表达式》，由电子工业出版社的博文视点推出。而《Beginning Regular Expressions》（以下简称《BRE》）可能还要等四个月以上才能面世。

本文的目的是就这两本“国内首册”正则表达式技术书的引进版作一比较。

首先，来看一下《MRE3》的英文目录（PDF下载）：

Preface
1 Introduction to Regular Expressions
    Solving Real Problems
    Regular Expressions as a Language
        The Filename Analogy
        The Language Analogy
    The Regular-Expression Frame of Mind
        If You Have Some Regular-Expression Experience
        Searching Text Files: Egrep
    Egrep Metacharacters
        Start and End of the Line
        Character Classes
        Matching Any Character with Dot
        Alternation
        Ignoring Differences in Capitalization
        Word Boundaries
        In a Nutshell
        Optional Items
        Other Quantifiers: Repetition
        Parentheses and Backreferences
        The Great Escape
    Expanding the Foundation
        Linguistic Diversification
        The Goal of a Regular Expression
        A Few More Examples
        Regular Expression Nomenclature
        Improving on the Status Quo
        Summary
    Personal Glimpses
2 Extended Introductory Examples
    About the Examples
        A Short Introduction to Perl
    Matching Text with Regular Expressions
        Toward a More Real-World Example
        Side Effects of a Successful Match
        Intertwined Regular Expressions
        Inter mission
    Modifying Text with Regular Expressions
        Example: Form Letter
        Example: Prettifying a Stock Price
        Automated Editing
        A Small Mail Utility
        Adding Commas to a Number with Lookaround
        Text-to-HTML Conversion
        That Doubled-Word Thing
3 Over view of Regular Expression Features and Flavors
    A Casual Stroll Across the Regex Landscape
        The Origins of Regular Expressions
        At a Glance
    Care and Handling of Regular Expressions
        Integrated Handling
        Procedural and Object-Oriented Handling
        A Search-and-Replace Example
        Search and Replace in Other Languages
        Care and Handling: Summary
    Strings, Character Encodings, and Modes
        Strings as Regular Expressions
        Character-Encoding Issues
        Unicode
        Regex Modes and Match Modes
    Common Metacharacters and Features
        Character Representations
        Character Classes and Class-Like Constructs
        Anchors and Other “Zero-Width Assertions”
        Comments and Mode Modifiers
        Grouping, Capturing, Conditionals, and Control
    Guide to the Advanced Chapters
4 The Mechanics of Expression Processing
    Start Your Engines!
        Two Kinds of Engines
        New Standards
        Regex Engine Types
        From the Department of Redundancy Department
        Testing the Engine Type
    Match Basics
        About the Examples
        Rule 1: The Match That Begins Earliest Wins
        Engine Pieces and Parts
        Rule 2: The Standard Quantifiers Are Greedy
    Regex-Directed Versus Text-Directed
        NFA Engine: Regex-Directed
        DFA Engine: Text-Dir ected
        First Thoughts: NFA and DFA in Comparison
    Backtracking
        A Really Crummy Analogy
        Two Important Points on Backtracking
        Saved States
        Backtracking and Greediness
    More About Greediness and Backtracking
        Problems of Greediness
        Multi-Character “Quotes”
        Using Lazy Quantifiers
        Greediness and Laziness Always Favor a Match
        The Essence of Greediness, Laziness, and Backtracking
        Possessive Quantifiers and Atomic Grouping
        Possessive Quantifiers, ?+, ++, ++, and {m,n}+
        The Backtracking of Lookaround
        Is Alternation Greedy?
        Taking Advantage of Ordered Alternation
    NFA, DFA, and POSIX
        “The Longest-Leftmost”
        POSIX and the Longest-Leftmost Rule
        Speed and Efficiency
        Summary: NFA and DFA in Comparison
    Summary
5 Practical Regex Techniques
    Regex Balancing Act
    A Few Short Examples
        Continuing with Continuation Lines
        Matching an IP Addr ess
        Working with Filenames
        Matching Balanced Sets of Parentheses
        Watching Out for Unwanted Matches
        Matching Delimited Text
        Knowing Your Data and Making Assumptions
        Stripping Leading and Trailing Whitespace
    HTML-Related Examples
        Matching an HTML Tag
        Matching an HTML Link
        Examining an HTTP URL
        Validating a Hostname
        Plucking Out a URL in the Real World
    Extended Examples
        Keeping in Sync with Your Data
        Parsing CSV Files
6 Crafting an Efficient Expression
    A Sobering Example
        A Simple Change—Placing Your Best Foot Forward
        Efficiency Versus Correctness
        Advancing Further—Localizing the Greediness
        Reality Check
    A Global View of Backtracking
        More Work for a POSIX NFA
        Work Required During a Non-Match
        Being More Specific
        Alternation Can Be Expensive
    Benchmarking
        Know What You’r e Measuring
        Benchmarking with PHP
        Benchmarking with Java
        Benchmarking with VB.NET
        Benchmarking with Ruby
        Benchmarking with Python
        Benchmarking with Tcl
    Common Optimizations
        No Free Lunch
        Everyone’s Lunch is Different
        The Mechanics of Regex Application
        Pre-Application Optimizations
        Optimizations with the Transmission
        Optimizations of the Regex Itself
    Techniques for Faster Expressions
        Common Sense Techniques
        Expose Literal Text
        Expose Anchors
        Lazy Versus Greedy: Be Specific
        Split Into Multiple Regular Expressions
        Mimic Initial-Character Discrimination
        Use Atomic Grouping and Possessive Quantifiers
        Lead the Engine to a Match
    Unrolling the Loop
        Method 1: Building a Regex From Past Experiences
        The Real “Unrolling-the-Loop” Pattern
        Method 2: A Top-Down View
        Method 3: An Internet Hostname
        Observations
        Using Atomic Grouping and Possessive Quantifiers
        Short Unrolling Examples
        Unrolling C Comments
    The Freeflowing Regex
        A Helping Hand to Guide the Match
        A Well-Guided Regex is a Fast Regex
        Wrapup
    In Summary: Think!
7 Perl
    Regular Expressions as a Language Component
        Perl’s Greatest Strength
        Perl’s Greatest Weakness
    Perl’s Regex Flavor
        Regex Operands and Regex Literals
        How Regex Literals Are Parsed
        Regex Modifiers
    Regex-Related Perlisms
        Expression Context
        Dynamic Scope and Regex Match Effects
        Special Variables Modified by a Match
    The qr/˙˙˙/ Operator and Regex Objects
        Building and Using Regex Objects
        Viewing Regex Objects
        Using Regex Objects for Efficiency
    The Match Operator
        Match’s Regex Operand
        Specifying the Match Target Operand
        Different Uses of the Match Operator
        Iterative Matching: Scalar Context, with /g
        The Match Operator’s Environmental Relations
    The Substitution Operator
        The Replacement Operand
        The /e Modifier
        Context and Return Value
    The Split Operator
        Basic Split
        Returning Empty Elements
        Split’s Special Regex Operands
        Split’s Match Operand with Capturing Parentheses
    Fun with Perl Enhancements
        Using a Dynamic Regex to Match Nested Pairs
        Using the Embedded-Code Construct
        Using local in an Embedded-Code Construct
        A Warning About Embedded Code and my Variables
        Matching Nested Constructs with Embedded Code
        Overloading Regex Literals
        Problems with Regex-Literal Overloading
        Mimicking Named Capture
    Perl Efficiency Issues
        “Ther e’s Mor e Than One Way to Do It”
        Regex Compilation, the /o Modifier, qr/˙˙˙/, and Efficiency
        Understanding the “Pre-Match” Copy
        The Study Function
        Benchmarking
        Regex Debugging Information
    Final Comments
8 Java
    Java’s Regex Flavor
        Java Support for \p{˙˙˙} and \P{˙˙˙}
        Unicode Line Terminators
    Using java.util.regex
    The Pattern.compile() Factory
        Pattern’s matcher method
    The Matcher Object
        Applying the Regex
        Querying Match Results
        Simple Search and Replace
        Advanced Search and Replace
        In-Place Search and Replace
        The Matcher’s Region
        Method Chaining
        Methods for Building a Scanner
        Other Matcher Methods
    Other Pattern Methods
        Pattern’s split Method, with One Argument
        Pattern’s split Method, with Two Arguments
    Additional Examples
        Adding Width and Height Attributes to Image Tags
        Validating HTML with Multiple Patterns Per Matcher
        Parsing Comma-Separated Values (CSV) Text
    Java Version Differences
        Differences Between 1.4.2 and 1.5.0
        Differences Between 1.5.0 and 1.6
9 .NET
    .NET’s Regex Flavor
        Additional Comments on the Flavor
    Using .NET Regular Expressions
        Regex Quickstart
        Package Overview
        Core Object Overview
    Core Object Details
        Creating Regex Objects
        Using Regex Objects
        Using Match Objects
        Using Group Objects
    Static “Convenience” Functions
        Regex Caching
    Support Functions
    Advanced .NET
        Regex Assemblies
        Matching Nested Constructs
        Capture Objects
10 PHP
    PHP’s Regex Flavor
    The Preg Function Interface
        “Pattern” Arguments
    The Preg Functions
        preg_match
        preg_matchRall
        preg_replace
        preg_replaceRcallback
        preg_split
        preg_grep
        preg_quote
    “Missing” Preg Functions
        preg_regex_to_pattern
        Syntax-Checking an Unknown Pattern Argument
        Syntax-Checking an Unknown Regex
    Recursive Expressions
        Matching Text with Nested Parentheses
        No Backtracking Into Recursion
        Matching a Set of Nested Parentheses
    PHP Efficiency Issues
        The S Pattern Modifier: “Study”
    Extended Examples
        CSV Parsing with PHP
        Checking Tagged Data for Proper Nesting
Index

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