this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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Programmer Humor

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(?i)\b((?:(?:[a-z][\w-]+:)?(?:/{1,3}|[a-z0-9%])|www\d{0,3}[.]|[a-z0-9.\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}/)(?:[^\s()<>]+|\(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\))+(?:\(([^\s()<>]+|(\([^\s()<>]+\)))*\)|[^\s`!()\[\]{};:'".,<>?«»“”‘’]))
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[–] tamiya_tt02@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

Looks like the hacking mini game in Fallout 4.

[–] marlowe221@lemmy.world 51 points 1 day ago

This is an example of the old adage that “When you use a regex to solve a problem, you end up with two problems.”

[–] xombie21@lemmy.dbzer0.com 53 points 1 day ago

That's John Gruber’s regex pattern for matching URL's (⌐■_■).

[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 39 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

Looks like an URL matcher of some sorts, not limited to HTTP. Kudos for handling parentheses as valid URL characters.

[–] refalo@programming.dev 20 points 1 day ago (3 children)

URLs can have newlines too

[–] hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)
[–] Venator@lemmy.nz 1 points 10 hours ago

It seems most browsers basically ignore them:

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/02/28/you-can-use-newline-characters-in-urls/

So probably not worth remembering anyway.

[–] Sphks@jlai.lu 4 points 1 day ago

What. The. Fuck.

Also no encoded basic auth or raw ip addresses (not that a useful website would likely use raw ipv4 or 6 since that causes huge CORS and sometimes even DNS issues...)

[–] DarkSirrush@piefed.ca 11 points 1 day ago

URLs in an HTML document that aren't namespaces or otherwise enclosed?

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

As visualized by Regex Vis [1]

As visualized by Regexper [2]

The regex fucks with the markdown, so I had to put them in code tags:

[1] https://regex-vis.com/?r=%5Cb%28%28%3F%3A%28%3F%3A%5Ba-z%5D%5B%5Cw-%5D%2B%3A%29%3F%28%3F%3A%2F%7B1%2C3%7D%7C%5Ba-z0-9%25%5D%29%7Cwww%5Cd%7B0%2C3%7D%5B.%5D%7C%5Ba-z0-9.%5C-%5D%2B%5B.%5D%5Ba-z%5D%7B2%2C4%7D%2F%29%28%3F%3A%5B%5E%5Cs%28%29%3C%3E%5D%2B%7C%5C%28%28%5B%5E%5Cs%28%29%3C%3E%5D%2B%7C%28%5C%28%5B%5E%5Cs%28%29%3C%3E%5D%2B%5C%29%29%29*%5C%29%29%2B%28%3F%3A%5C%28%28%5B%5E%5Cs%28%29%3C%3E%5D%2B%7C%28%5C%28%5B%5E%5Cs%28%29%3C%3E%5D%2B%5C%29%29%29*%5C%29%7C%5B%5E%5Cs%60%21%28%29%5C%5B%5C%5D%7B%7D%3B%3A%27%22.%2C%3C%3E%3F%C2%AB%C2%BB%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9D%E2%80%98%E2%80%99%5D%29%29

[2] https://regexper.com/#\b((?:(?:[a-z][\w-]%20:)?(?:\/{1,3}|[a-z0-9%])|www\d{0,3}[.]|[a-z0-9.\-]+[.][a-z]{2,4}\/)(?:[^\s()%3C%3E]+|\(([^\s()%3C%3E]+|(\([^\s()%3C%3E]+\)))*\))+(?:\(([^\s()%3C%3E]+|(\([^\s()%3C%3E]+\)))*\)|[^\s%60!()\[\]{};:'%22.,%3C%3E?%C2%AB%C2%BB%E2%80%9C%E2%80%9D%E2%80%98%E2%80%99]))

[–] Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 points 1 day ago

check out Regulex! it doesn't support mode modifiers but it does lack some features but i really like how its graphs look

[–] pewpew@feddit.it 21 points 1 day ago
[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 16 points 1 day ago (2 children)

At first glance IP address or URL, embedded in HTML, whatever it is, it's a doozy. I wonder what the performance of it is like.

[–] towerful@programming.dev 13 points 1 day ago

It works out as O(regex^n)

[–] tdawg@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago
[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 13 points 1 day ago

Whatever this is supposed to match, I bet the bycatch is bigger than tuna fishing.

Is it a rick roll?

[–] kamikazerusher@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Probably documents from HP’s atrocious support site

[–] Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 day ago
[–] sudoMakeUser@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

Hold on, let me draw up the NFA