Expressionista is a tool for building and working with .NET Regular Expresions (Regexes). It is written in C# and WPF and built upon the .NET 3.5 runtime.

Currently the tool supports the following functionalities:

Build and test a regular expression against any source text, with support for any valid combination of RegexOptions A visual interface to the Regex.Replace method which allows for replacement of text in a source document and outputs the results (still under development) Facility to convert a Regex built within the app to C# code that can be pasted right into an existing application Facility to convert a C# escaped-style string of Regex code and import that into the app

There are at least two tools out in the wild that are similar to this one: Expresso and The Regulator.

I haven't used Expresso in quite a while mainly because it bugged me no end that it requires a free registration code. That doesn't sound so bad but after having to email the developer at least 4 times for a new code when I reinstalled my OS, etc. I just got tired of the pointless hassle. It's free so why do I need to enter a code? I did think it was a pretty nice app though.

At the point where I became fed up with Expresso's registration hassle I searched around and found The Regulator. The Regulator is a similar tool to Expresso, is free, open-source and doesn't require any registration. So far so good and in fact I've been using The Regulator for a couple of years now. But the problem is that for me at least The Regulator crashes quite often. A while back I got fed up with the crashes and tried to download the source code from SourceForge where the project is hosted but either was too stupid to figure out where they're hiding their source or else it isn't actually posted. Yes, I could have tried to contact the developer etc, etc but that just didn't seem worth the effort. So I've sucked up The Regulator's crashes for a couple of years now.

But now that .NET 3.5 and WPF have come out I've been looking for a good project to cut my teeth on these new technologies with. And then during the course of a workday The Regulator crashed on me again and I decided to write Expressionista.

I'm not trying to say Expressionista's any better than either of the above-mentioned tools or any of the others out there. But it's mine. I posess and understand the code. I promise to keep the source repository complete and up-to-date. It does what I need it to do without crashing and doesn't include any stuff I don't need. And it was a fun way to learn WPF.

If you find it useful and have a second drop me an email and let me know!