Regular expressions are a formal language used for manipulating and analyzing text. They are a standard features in a wide range of languages and popular tools, including Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, JavaScript, the .NET framework, PHP, and MySQL. Web servers such as Apache and IIS7 use them for URL rewriting. You can find them in tools and technologies as diverse as grep and egrep to Visual Studio. This talk will get you up and running with regular expressions. We will be discussing Regular Expressions as a language and cover the syntax with extensive demos. We will also cover the practical use of regular expressions by demonstrating best practices for writing, testing, performance optimization, readability, compilation, and design guidelines. We will use the .NET framework's flavor of regular expressions in the demos. However since .NET regular expressions like most regular expression libraries are Perl compatible, the syntax presented will generally work with a wide range of regular expression packages. The speaker will attempt to point out language variations for the major implementations.