The Regex Coach is a graphical application for Linux and Windows which can be used to experiment with (Perl-compatible) regular expressions interactively. The application contains the following features:
- It shows whether a regular expression matches a particular target string
- It can also show which parts of the target string correspond to captured register groups or to arbitrary parts of the regular expression
- It can "walk" through the target string one match at a time
- It can simulate Perl's split and s/// (substitution) operators
- It tries to describe the regular expression in plain English
- It can show a graphical representation of the regular expression's parse tree
- It can single-step through the matching process as performed by the regex engine
- Everything happens in "real time", i.e. as soon as you make a change somewhere in the application all other parts are instantly updated
