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Comment by brendanfalk | Hacker News Reader

RegExr is my go to tool for testing regex. It’s always been able to solve my needs and I’ve never had any need to change. In saying that, I’ve always wondered if regexr is missing out on something that other regex build/test tools have?

What other regex tools do people use and why?

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I typically use Regex101. It's been good enough for my needs and I'm just used to it at this point. Looking at RegExr, it seems like the only big difference is that Regex101 supports substitution, though I think I've only used it once.

https://regex101.com/

It also lets you switch between regex implementations in different languages.

What do you mean by substitution? Replacing a match with a string/pattern?

If so, RegExr does have that tool (at the middle/bottom, tools bar), and it probably is the functionality I most often use.

Ah, I see it now. Usually when I do replace/substitution it's in a larger project so it's not a feature I typically use on the site. Most of my Regex101 use is just figuring out why a regex I wrote isn't executing like I expected.

I normally use the replace/substitution in situations such as: I have list of, say, 1000+ things/rows in a single column. I want to put them in a single line and separate by comma. It is is pretty easy to go there and substitute \n for ", ".

That said, that's also doable in a text editor, but I like that I can visualize the pattern and results more easily.

regex101 has a few more distinguishing features:

- more flavor support,

- a regex debugger,

- code generator, with support for a lot of languages,

- a complete quick reference with examples,

- an extensive regex library,

- a regex quiz for "golfing" and learning purposes,

Perhaps, most importantly, it runs entirely client side and does not submit any information to the server unless you hit save (which returns a delete link to remove all data). You can even run the website and (most) of its features offline.

Regexr submits all input to the server for processing.

But, I'm biased, since I wrote regex101 :)

I use regex101.com, that looks a lot like RegExr. I remember using RegExr at some point, and I think I default to regex101 just because the name is a bit easier to remember. I'll try to remember to switch to RegExr since it's open source.

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