Do you love baboons and gorillas? You can find either of them with the same regular expression using alternation! Alternation, performed in regular expressions with the pipe symbol, |, allows us to match either the characters preceding the | OR the characters after the |. The regex baboons|gorillas will match baboons in the text I love baboons, but will also match gorillas in the text I love gorillas.
Are you thinking about how to match the whole piece of text I love baboons or I love gorillas? We will get to that later on!
Instructions
The interactive applet in the browser allows you to enter a regular expression and see if it matches a string of text. If a character is matched, you’ll see it highlighted in green. If there’s a checkmark next to the string, you’ve completely matched the whole piece of text!
Enter a regular expression that matches each of the strings listed below “Match these strings” and does NOT match any of the strings listed below “Don’t match these strings.”
When you’ve entered a regular expression that matches the appropriate strings, a key will appear in the browser. Add the key to the end of the URL in the code editor and run the code to unlock the next exercise!