Taming what?

This book starts very well with a practical, easy to follow, step-to-step introduction to regular expressions and their use with Java. This is to be appreciated since regexp are a complex subject that can easily be presented in an intimidating and obscure way. The problem is, this books never soars over this elementary level and in the end leaves you a bit disappointed even if you are totally new to the subject. The book is small and there are lots of white spaces, repetitions and not so useful discussions. I am under the unpleasant impression that the author and publisher realized the book lacked some meat and tried to cover up for it. It can still be a useful text if you want a really gentle intro to regexp usage in Java, but be warned that it lacks a serious and convincing treatment of regexp syntax. You will come out from this book with the ability to use regular expresisons only for really simple cases.
The subtitle should be "a light intro to java.util.regex engine" and not certainly "taming the java.util.regex engine".

Other Reviews

• Adequately lukewarm, definitely not taming
• Taming developers for the REGEX adventure
• Taming what?
• A lucid explanation of regular expressions
• Not perfect, but useful for Java developers new to reg. expr