Currently, I build regexes in small chunks, adding functionality until they work. While this works fine for general programming, it's less efficient for a regex due to my inability to easily step through them when they break. Sometimes I write some pretty hairy regexes. Two of the regexes I've recently had to create are below. Unfortunately, I can't just glance at them and understand what they do, despite the fact that I wrote them. 
die "Bad number!\n" 
    if $number !~ /(?:[\d]{1,6}\.[\d]{0,5})|(?:[\d]{0,5}\.[\d]{1,6})|(
+?:[\d]{1,7})/;

$count ++ if $stuff =~ /(?i:p)rods(?:\\s+(?:[^&]|&(?!gt;))+)?/;

[download]
Is there some way to watch the regex engine as it goes along? I'm thinking something similar to the Perl's debugger.

I actually use the /x modifier and comment them heavily, which helps. I've reduced them to one line above for effect.

Cheers,
Ovid

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In reply to Regex Testing by Ovid

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