Debuggex vs The Regex Coach

Debuggex is an online visual regex tester for JavaScript, Python, and PCRE. It offers visual and text modes, a step-through debugger, and pattern explanations for examining expressions. Users can add unit tests to check matches and subgroups as a regex changes, and browse a repository of pre-built expressions that includes tests. The service generates code snippets, saves patterns, and creates links that reopen expressions; expressions can also be embedded in StackOverflow answers. The Free plan costs nothing and includes two saved unit tests per regex and ten public expressions. Basic costs $5 a month, while Pro costs $15 a month. Enterprise has no listed price and includes options such as private server deployment, denial-of-service prevention, flexible user counts, an OEM license, and on-site training. The free tier excludes snippets based on expressions from the library. The privacy policy says saved or shared expressions can be viewed by anyone with the link, and previous versions are stored after updates. Debuggex is available on the web.

The Regex Coach is a graphical application for experimenting interactively with Perl-compatible regular expressions. It shows whether a pattern matches a target string and updates the interface when changes are made. Users can highlight captured groups or selected parts of a pattern in the target text. The application can attempt a plain-English explanation of a regex, show its parse tree graphically, and step through the matching process. It also simulates Perl split and substitution operations. Written in Common Lisp, it uses CL-PPCRE as its regex engine. The current Windows download is version 0.9.2; the maker says the program has not changed since 2008. Linux is no longer maintained, though an unsupported 0.8.5 release is available and also runs on FreeBSD. There is no Mac version planned. The program is provided as-is without warranty, and the maker says not to expect support for older Windows configurations or the unsupported Linux release. The engine may overflow its stack with relatively long regular expressions. The listed plan is free, with conditions for commercial use and redistribution.