Patterns App Reviews

This is a great tool to have tucked away however something needs to be done about the fonts, at least allow us to change them. It's especially bothersome when you have longer regexs. That said, it's well worth the price tag for quickly writing and testing regular expressions.

Very good app. Helped visually understand regular expressions. Good tool for beginners to see how your regular expression works. saved a lot of time. Great app.

what can I say? it crashes all the time.

Patterns is THE BEST regex app in the Mac App Store. But it hasn't been recompiled and updated to be compatible with OS X 10.11 El Capitan. It hasn't been updated since 2012- FOUR YEARS AGO. It is crashing for larger search text. It is showing its age and incompatibilities when it crashes.. At this point in time, it is sad to say but it is abandoned. I'll keep it for simple text samples. But I wish it is at least recompiled with the latest X-Code to make sure it is compatible with OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

I don’t do a lot of regular expressions, but when I do, this app helps me when I’m not getting the results I think I should be getting. Limited help, so if you know nothing about regular expressions you’ll probably need to supplement it, but the help that is there is perfect to remind me.

I need to find text in a web page source file using regex. I would paste in the source text of the web page file and try searching on it using Patterns. Unfortunately Patterns would crash every time. Page source files I guess are too much text for Patterns to process, otherwise a great application. Disappointed.

It's so not worth my time to figure out the pattern I need. It is very worth the price of Patterns. Having a live preview of the effect on your data makes experimentation simple, and in fact I use regex much more now that I have a tool that takes the pain out and leaves the elegance.

Please, add Groovy support.

I like the editor and find the app very useful. However the app crashes everytime I try to create a named group. When it happens there is no autosave so I can pickup from where I left off. This means lost work and wasted time. APP needs some work.

I love Patterns. Drop in some real samples I want to match against, as well as any false positives (things that are matching that I don’t want to match). Type in some fake ones as well if desired. Then build up the regex, keeping the handy cheatsheet up as necessary. I like the iteration it allows me. Only things missing IMO are: 1 - ability to save a workspace, my #1 desire. I’d love to save both regexes and the samples I test it against, for later refinement or sharing. 2 - would like it to keep a scratchpad, a history of iterations. Would make it even more freeing to experiment, go back and forth, and recover complicated bits after working out another section of logic. Right now, to solve both of these, I keep a text doc handy and copy out my work (patterns and example text) frequently so I have a record of work.

I bought this application based on the love affair I have with CodeRunner, but this one just misses the perfect mark. Seems like some of the valid regex I've thrown into it don't validate and when copying code out of it in php code, it uses double quotes and escaped slashes which really nag my work flow since they're not pretty and not efficient. The issue's i've had with code runner are with character classes and utf-8 testing using \p{L} type checks which never seem to validate. I want to love this app, and over time perhaps those features will also be added in, but right now it's not the be all end all of regex testing, and in fact, i could probably do more with CodeRunner considering it ties into the libraries installed on my machine. Great for testing smaller simple regex, but doesn't quite pass muster when pitted against unicode.

It didn’t have a character limit constraint for the regular expression. Yep, I have complicated expressions that exceed the character limit that I was rushing to this app to troubleshoot. Can’t. Please update the app to support like 10,000 character limit or something on regexes or no limit at all. Thanks. Oh! With “Free Spacing”, please allow comments with the # tag and allow the ability that if you paste in a regex when the “Free Spacing” is checked, to paste in with the newlines, spaces, and tabs (whitespace characters) intact instead of interpolating them and adding them as regex special characters \n\t\s resepectively. Thanks!

The title says it all. I love CodeRunner, another app by this developer, and was looking forward to using this to debug some of my more complex regexs. Unfortunately it crashes whenever I try to use it. :(

No longer seems to work in macOS Sierra. Sad.

Patterns (coupled with CodeRunner) has made learning the basics of programming in Python and Perl easier for me. Whether I'm learning something new or just testing code, these apps have become indispensible.

This tool is great! Got me moving much faster on my large project that needed a lot of regular expressions. Well worth the investment.

I'm using this to test regex expression for Perl and Python and it works great. I put in the text I want to match or replace and then enter the regex expression. What matches and/or what is going to be replaced gets highlighted. For what I'm doing this is a very good tool that saves time, and a great value.

I have tried numerous online regexp validation schemes, with very poor results. Imagine my surprise when within 5 minutes I had the answer to a usage that I had spent hours on, and still only had partial success. A greatly simplified regsub expression actually did what I was trying to do with something more complicated. The feedback is great for errors, and the response time is instantaneous for the result. Nice helpmate on one of the hardest to understand parts of coding. It's in my dock now.

Easily the best Regexp utility for Mac. Highly recommend.

I use patterns to test out my regex expressions pretty much every time I use a regex expression. The copy code snippets tool is occasionally useful, but honestly does not work most of the time. For example, it does not handle named subgroups properly with python, and it always performs the match function rather than search. It might be nice to provide a more robust code snippet tool, because most of the time it is much easier to just write the code manually instead of copy/paste from patterns.

I got this app to assist with constructing Regex terms. While it holds a lot of promise, there are two critical flaws. 1) There’s no way to save your work. By itself, that’s not a big deal. It becomes a big deal when the app crashes for no apparent reason. I’ve had the thing crash twice in the past 15 minutes after I’m close to getting a term done. If I had hair to pull out, I would. I hope the developer has Crashlytics installed so he/she can fix whatever the problem is.

I’ve used regular expressions off and on for the past few decades - they are indispensable for certain tasks, and huge time savers in others. But I don’t use them constantly, which means I often need a quick refresher to get things working just right. That’s where this nicely crafted app comes in. I find it a quick, and intuitive way to re-familiarize myself with the arcane workings of regex expressions. My compliments to Nikolai Krill. Thanks for another great update!

App could be very helpful if it supported the full range of regex syntax — for example, number limits/quantifiers. Please keep developing the app!

Awesome application… The results appear as you type and the application shows you simple colors to distinguish simple steps. It also allows you to keep a copy of the original text as it shows you what changes are being performed. I love simple, intelligent, effective and fast apps… this is one of them.

This app does not support multiple languages as claimed - at least not Python which is a few unique syntax variations. Nor does it show group matches. Pythex was down, so I though I’d try this. Even without the direct Python support, not too useful without the group display. If you already know how to write regexes, you don’t need this.

I like this app. It’s so helpful to see the live results as you type. I use a lot of regexes, but mostly on the command line. I wish the regex choices included sed/grep/awk/POSIX instead of only programming languages. I’m using PHP because that seems to be POSIX. In general, it would be helpful to have POSIX BRE, POSIX ERE, PCRE, Oniguruma, etc as choices instead of only programming languages. This hasn’t been updated in a while, so I’m not too hopeful. I’d definitely spend more money to get my wish. :)

This app has saved me a ton of time and frustration, and is a pleasure to use. It’s great not only for coming up with complex regexps, but for experimenting with simpler, more optimized equivalents. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

This is really refreshing to see a great, clean, sexy looking functional application. It works really well and has a reference to also teach you different patterns you may not have known about. You really can’t beat the regex checking in realtime to help speed up the process and it serves to get rid of your headaches brought on by needing complicated regex patterns! Love it!

I love this app, but almost every time I use it, I run out of room in the regex field. I deal with log files with many fields and I use named groups, so the field fills up pretty fast. I'd like to think that this could be fixed easily, but I fear this project has been abandoned.

Patterns is great. There is, however, a small bug that you may discover. In certain cases, while typing a regex, you’ll crash the application and it won’t start up again because it tries to restore the last thing you typed and enters a crash loop. To fix it temporarily, open Terminal and use these commands: defaults read com.krill.Patterns lastRegex defaults write com.krill.Patterns lastRegex "" This first command prints out your previously entered regex (for your reference) and then clears it from the app’s preferences so it can start normally. (Note that it does include extra backslash escapes, you’ll have to strip those yourself.) You can then fix the regex (BEFORE pasting it back into Patterns) and resume where you left off. I’ll be contacting Patterns to get the root issue fixed as well, but in the meantime this may help someone.

Simple, functional, and clear. My only problem is that I wish it could remember the previous state when I start it.

Very nice interface and intuitive… but after several sudden application crashes on my MB Pro running El Capitan, I have had to give up and purchased a competitor’s application instead.

I use this app daily and absolutely love it. It will not only help you create whatever regexes you need, but also grok what’s going on thanks to the syntax highlighting and live matching/replacing.

I use CodeRunner for my PHP development; it's really made a difference for me being able to try my scripts out in small chunks of test files, without having to worry about having a web server available. I can just point CodeRunner to any of my existing script files, or create special test files, and I'm off and running. The interface is clean and nice-looking; it's responsive and seems quite stable. I highly recommend it.

Any chance of adding SED code?

I really like this app for building and testing regular expressions. The reference sheet is concise and fairly easy to understand. A few suggestions: 1. Some simple examples would be nice for beginners. 2. A more-apparent “No Matches” indication would be helpful. I’m a beginner and at first my regex’s were wrong but I wasn’t sure the app was actually working or not. 3. Would be great to have a way of keeping a list or library of regex’s that I know actually work within the app. Thank you so much for this app as it is.

If you are new to Regular Expressions do not buy this product. It is not simple. The progarm is simple for people who understand Regular Expressions already.

The icon has the circle with the slash through it after updating to Sierra. Uninstalled & reinstalled. Still has the problem. Great app, but it needs to be updated. Unfortunately, given that the last update was in 2012, I think this is a dead app.

Simple, easy to use to build and test your regular expressions. I see a quite a few feature requests in the reviews, but the ratings speak for themselves. Yes, it could have some more features, but it certainly delivers way more than $2.99 in value. Tusen Takk Nikolai!

Will not accept a regular expression that is more than about 500 characters long. Doesn’t show capturing groups, except in the output of replacements. Bought it a while ago, have tried to use it dozens of times, but those limitations made me give up in all but two cases, but those were just when I was demoing something to someone else.

This app makes it easy to write and run regular expressions on large snippets of text. I just now discovered the "Copy Code" feature that'll write the regex search and replace in Javascript, PHP, Python, Ruby etc. All this time I was using it as a starting point to make sure my regex was correct and then rewriting it in PHP. I could've simply selected PHP from the dropdown list at the top right and copied the code. I have had a few crashes on some patterns in the past but that was many weeks ago so it was probably user error. One thing that might be nice would be the ability to save the patterns but that is no big deal because I just save them in CodeBox.

Missing Groups showing in Match mode. Almost useless without that important feature,

I don't usually write reviews, but when I saw this tool show up with a major update, I couldn't help but contribute. I use this tool very frequently to mock up regular expression patterns and it fits the bill everytime. I love the reference sheet too--there have been times I launch Patterns just to use the Reference sheet! If you want a great companion app for regular expressions, look no further, this is the premier one on macOS.

I’m working on learning regular expressions on my own and Patterns has been an invaluable tool. Highly recommended! Worth every penny.

I love this app and use is multiple time throughout my day. Thank you for the wonderful app. The only addition I would love is to have multiple windows open at once, only being able to have one Patterns window open at once seems a bit silly to me.