Small suggestion for a resource for the curious trying to interpret code examples

[DrNicholasFlamel]

So I was reading about regex and they give the example: https?://([A-Za-z0-9-]+.)?[A-Za-z0-9-]+.[A-Za-z0-9-.]+/? for domain names. I really wanted to know what this actually meant because I am a cat and am going to be killed.

Now, stop your eye rolling, but using chatGPT, I got this and it was superbly helpful:

https? : Match "http" followed by an optional "s" (for "https")
// : Match two forward slashes "//"
( : Start of a capturing group
[A-Za-z0-9-]+ : Match one or more letters, digits, or hyphens (for subdomains)
. : Match a dot "."
)? : End of the capturing group; make it optional (for optional subdomain)
[A-Za-z0-9-]+ : Match one or more letters, digits, or hyphens (for the main domain)
. : Match a dot "."
[A-Za-z0-9-.]+ : Match one or more letters, digits, hyphens, or dots (for top-level domain and optional path)
/? : Match an optional forward slash "/"

So in case this is of use to any disturbingly curious folks. here you are. chatGPT can be your friend.

yes I know that they define these in the text of the course but that won't always be the case.

[maltenform]

My wife loves chatGPT as an assist to code-writing.

I'm probably betraying my oldness and fogeyhood but I'd rather Google. I like that examples on Stack Overflow and other pages will show how the code can behave in the field.

[rosemm]

I also usually stick to google and stackoverflow (old habits die hard!), but I have had some fun playing with ChatGPT lately. It's neat to see what it does well --- the regex example above is a great one! -- and also interesting to see where it fails.

[rosemm]

I love this! And I think "disturbingly curious" is probably a good descriptor for a lot of the folks in this program, including us running it 🤓

Also, quick reminder for anyone trying out chatGPT: Whatever you write in the "prompt" potentially becomes part of the training set for the model, which means it might be regurgitated back out to other users. So never put anything sensitive or private in the prompt .