The Not So Daily Util #5 - Expresso

Expresso:

If you work with Regular Expressions (who doesn’t?) this is a tool that will save you a LOT of time of debugging in VS, just install (requires registration – but doesn’t cost money) and work of the “Test” tab.

Put your regular expression in the top left text box, the text to be analysed in the bottom left box, you will see an “analysis” of the RegEx on the top right box (explaining the different parts and the matches in plain text), and once you run the match (or partial match) the results will be displayed in a nice visual way in the bottom right box.

 

There are many other tools that do this, and are free but this is the one that I feel comfortable with (check out Regulator Or ReguLazy (from the same author), http://www.regexbuddy.com/ , http://www.nregex.com/  RegExDesigner.Net, for other options)

 

Expresso - http://www.ultrapico.com/ExpressoDownload.htm

 

The Not So Daily Util #4 - 7Zip

I  kind of lost track for a while, we’re back!

I decided I won’t do this daily but only when I have something good (you know they don’t release good software that often)… so instead of the date, it will just follow a sequential number (we’re up to #4)

 

7zip:

In my opinion much better than winzip and all the rest (and FREE), unlike Winzip it supports RAR and others out of the box, in short, you won’t need any other archiving utility… has a simple and usable GUI and command line support.

 

It’s open source and the main feature is the open source 7z format, which is better than zip, also it compresses zip better than winzip…

 

Install it, you won’t be sorry. Smaller archives and faster operation.

 

7Zip - http://www.7-zip.org/