R E I N D E E R E F F E C T

If you have a taste for NP-completeness, Sudoku, or literate programming, then this one’s for you.

You’ve been tasked to implement a parser for yet another language—one with the brevity of COBOL and the readability of APL. You’re sick of writing parsers. Surely a computer can do it, right?

Your eyes are bleeding, and trying to reliably extract information from C header files using regular expressions has driven you to the brink of insanity. You can admit that you’ve got a problem, but now what?

Have you ever wondered what the hell it really means when you use a regular expression, or why you shouldn’t use regexes to parse HTML? Then read on to learn the foundations of how regular expression engines work.

You’re certain the price of that stock will take off—your broker says so—but you don’t want to commit all your money just yet. What are your options?