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regular expressions 101 VS UglifyJS

Compare regular expressions 101 VS UglifyJS and see what are their differences

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regular expressions 101 logo regular expressions 101

Extensive regex tester and debugger with highlighting for PHP, PCRE, Python and JavaScript.

UglifyJS logo UglifyJS

JavaScript minifier, beautifier, mangler and parser toolkit.
  • regular expressions 101 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-30
  • UglifyJS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-30

regular expressions 101 features and specs

  • Interactive Learning
    Regex101 provides an interactive environment where users can test and learn regular expressions in real-time, making the learning process more engaging and practical.
  • Extensive Documentation
    The site offers extensive documentation and references for different regular expression flavors (PCRE, JavaScript, Python, and Golang), facilitating easy access to syntax and usage examples.
  • Error Highlighting
    Regex101 highlights errors in your regular expressions and provides explanations, which helps users quickly identify and correct mistakes.
  • Quick Reference
    A quick reference guide is available on the platform, which helps users look up common regular expression tokens and their meanings without leaving the page.
  • Saved Workspaces
    Users can save their regular expressions and test cases in workspaces, making it convenient to revisit and continue working on them at a later time.
  • Community Support
    The platform has community features wherein users can share their regular expressions and get feedback or suggestions from others.

Possible disadvantages of regular expressions 101

  • Limited to Browser
    Regex101 is a web-based tool, and its usage is restricted to browsers with internet access, limiting its offline availability and performance in a development environment.
  • User Interface Complexity
    For beginners, the user interface can be somewhat overwhelming due to the numerous options and features available, leading to a steeper learning curve.
  • Performance Limitations
    While sufficient for most use cases, Regex101 may struggle with very large datasets or extremely complex regular expressions, causing performance issues.
  • Dependency on External Product
    Relying on an external service means users are dependent on the platform's availability and continued maintenance, which can be a risk if the service goes down or changes significantly.
  • Potential Overreliance
    Frequent use of Regex101 for developing regular expressions may lead to an overreliance on the tool, potentially hindering the development of strong, intrinsic regex skills.

UglifyJS features and specs

  • Minification
    UglifyJS effectively reduces the file size of JavaScript by removing whitespace, shortening variable names, and eliminating unnecessary code, which can lead to faster load times in web applications.
  • Maturity and Stability
    As a mature and well-established tool, UglifyJS has a long history of usage and a strong community, making it a reliable choice for JavaScript minification with less risk of encountering severe bugs.
  • Customization
    UglifyJS offers various options and configurations that allow developers to control the minification process, such as toggling specific optimizations and preserving certain comments.
  • Compression
    Besides minification, UglifyJS provides compression options which further optimize the JavaScript code by evaluating constant expressions and removing unreachable code.

Possible disadvantages of UglifyJS

  • Source Mapping Complexity
    Generating source maps with UglifyJS can sometimes be complex and might not always accurately map minified code back to the original source, complicating debugging efforts.
  • Transformations Side Effects
    Some of the aggressive transformations made by UglifyJS could potentially introduce bugs if the original code relies on exact syntax structure or has side effects that depend on expression evaluation order.
  • Limited ES6+ Support
    Historically, UglifyJS has lagged in support for newer ECMAScript features compared to other modern minifiers, which might cause issues when dealing with ES6+ syntax without transpiling it first.
  • Error Diagnosis
    When errors occur during the minification process, UglifyJS may not always provide clear or detailed error messages, which can make it difficult to diagnose and fix issues.

Analysis of regular expressions 101

Overall verdict

  • Regex101 is highly recommended for both beginners and experienced developers who work with regular expressions. Its user-friendly design and comprehensive features make it an invaluable resource for understanding and mastering regex.

Why this product is good

  • Regex101 is considered a good tool because it provides an intuitive interface for testing and debugging regular expressions. It offers real-time feedback, detailed explanations of regex patterns, and supports multiple regex flavors. It also features a quick reference guide and code generator for implementing regex in various programming languages.

Recommended for

  • Software developers
  • Data analysts
  • QA testers
  • Anyone learning or working with regular expressions

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to regular expressions 101 and UglifyJS)
Regular Expressions
100 100%
0% 0
Web Application Bundler
0 0%
100% 100
Programming Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Tool
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, regular expressions 101 seems to be a lot more popular than UglifyJS. While we know about 881 links to regular expressions 101, we've tracked only 1 mention of UglifyJS. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

regular expressions 101 mentions (881)

  • Regex Isn't Hard (2023)
    In practice, the first unpaired ] is treated as an ordinary character (at least according to https://regex101.com/) - which does nothing to make this regex fit for its intended purpose. I'm not sure whether this is according to spec. (I think it is, though that does not really matter compared to what the implementations actually do.) Characters which are sometimes special, depending on context, are one more thing... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • Regex Isn't Hard (2023)
    > unreadable once written (to me anyway) https://regex101.com can explain your regex back to you. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • Catching Trailing Spaces - A Superhero's Story!
    To try out our newfound regex, I will use the website called RegEx101. It's a superhero favourite, so you better bookmark it for later 🔖. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • How I accidentally wrote a simple Markdown editor
    Let's break it down a bit. You can use Regex101 to follow me. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • 22 Unique Developer Resources You Should Explore
    URL: https://regex101.com What it does: Test and debug regular expressions with instant explanations. Why it's great: Simplifies regex learning and ensures patterns work as intended. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
View more

UglifyJS mentions (1)

  • Overview of the next-gen frontend dev tools
    There are many minifiers such as terser and uglify. But, because minifying also require to parse the JS, it is actually possible to use esbuild and SWC to minify the code. Here's a benchmark of the main minifiers. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing regular expressions 101 and UglifyJS, you can also consider the following products

RegExr - RegExr.com is an online tool to learn, build, and test Regular Expressions.

Terser - JavaScript parser, mangler, optimizer and beautifier toolkit for ES6+

rubular - A ruby based regular expression editor

JavaScript Obfuscator - JavaScript Obfuscator is a free online tool that obfuscates your source code, preventing it from being stolen and used without permission.

Regex Crossword - Welcome to the fantastic world of nerdy regex fun!

Closure Compiler - The Closure Compiler is a tool for making JavaScript download and run faster.