There are two ways to match URLs with PasswordMaker wildcards or regular expressions.
Wildcards
Wildcards are pervasive throughout computing; you've most likely seen them before. The asterisk (*) substitutes as a wildcard character for zero or more characters, and the question mark (?) substitutes as a wildcard character for any one character. In Unix, this is referred to as glob expansion.
Wildcard Examples
URL Pattern: *.yahoo.com/* | |
Some Matches |
Some Non-Matches |
| Everything in Yahoo's domain | http://mail.google.com/ |
URL Pattern: *mail.yahoo.com* | |
Some Matches |
Some Non-Matches |
| http://mail.yahoo.com/ https://1.mail.yahoo.com.spoof.net/ http://mail.yahoo.com/clownshoes/ http://mail.yahoo.com/inbox/123.html ftp://mail.yahoo.com | http://maps.yahoo.com |
URL Pattern: http://??.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown | |
Some Matches |
Some Non-Matches |
| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown/ ftp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown |
URL Pattern: http://digg.com/ | |
Some Matches |
Some Non-Matches |
| http://digg.com/ | http://digg.com http://www.digg.com/ |
URL Pattern: *://*.asimov.???/* | |
Some Matches |
Some Non-Matches |
| ftp://ftp.asimov.net/ ftp://ftp.asimov.com/theory.html http://bear.asimov.net/mom/ https://isaac.asimov.org/hercules gopher://asimov.net/ | ftp://ftp.asimov.co.uk http://isaac.home.com/tin.php |
URL Pattern: * | |
Some Matches |
Some Non-Matches |
| Matches everything | |
Regular Expressions
Regular expressions are also pervasive throughout computing, although they are sometimes considered an advanced topic. Regular expressions are like "wildcards on steroids" because they are more poweful and flexible, but their goal is similar to wildcards: define a means with which to match arbitrary text.
For those already familiar with regular expressions, PasswordMaker adheres to the JavaScript 1.5 regular expression syntax. When in doubt, refer to this guide. Do not surround regular expressions with forward slashes like this: /abc/
Further Reading
Entire books have been written about regular expressions, so rather than discuss them here, we refer you to some free, valuable on-line resources which teach everything you need to know about them. This list is by no means concise, and we have no affiliation with these resources.
- Regular Expression Tutorial and Reference One of the most comprehensive, free regular expression tutorials on the net.
- RegexAdvice.com Forums and blogs dedicated to regular expressions.
- Regular Expression Library Currently contains over 1000 expressions from contributors around the world.
- Using Regular Expressions Brief introduction to regular expressions
- Regular Expression Cheat Sheet A one page printable reference for regular expressions
- Regular expressions: a short tutorial A five-minute tutorial on how to learn the most useful regular expressions
- A List of Regex Topics Wiki with various topics about regular expressions.
- Mastering Regular Expressions Official website for Jeffrey Friedl's book.
- Regenechsen Beginners regular expression tutorial with exercises.
Of course, you can always ask for regular expression advice in the the PasswordMaker Forums.
