Mark is a programmer who hates writing regular expressions. So he wrote a kind of visual regular expression generator that starts with the string to be searched, identifies recognizable patterns in it, and lets you select those you want. Then it outputs a working (albeit probably inelegant) regular expression to get the job done. The commentariat over at txt2re.com is somewhat predictably divided between grateful regex amateurs and annoyed experts. [via Boing Boing]