Reflection

As a technology with a long history and with steady use, numerous resources exist online and in books on regular expressions. You can and should develop sufficient understanding that you can decode a suggested regular expression to determine if it fits your needs. The ability to create your own regular expressions will grow as you make use of them in your work.

If the LIKE operator appears to be a poor substitute for regular expressions, you have the option of using MySQL. However, the LIKE operator might be sufficient for most operations involving information already in databases. Information in the fields of records is not generally of the free-form character that gives rise to the need for general searches. You do have the ability to use your knowledge of the LIKE or the REGEXP operators to modify any user input.

Interface design and validation procedures require and deserve your attention. The technical tools are available; the hard work is determining what you need to do.