Western Governors University (WGU) ITSW 2113 D278 Scripting and Programming Foundations Practice Exam

Regular expressions are a powerful tool in programming primarily used to search, match, and manipulate text patterns within strings. They allow developers to define complex search patterns to identify specific sequences of characters. For instance, a regular expression can be used to validate email addresses, extract specific data from text (like dates or phone numbers), or replace certain patterns within a larger body of text.

The use of regular expressions facilitates tasks such as string parsing, finding substrings, and performing substitutions, which are common requirements in data processing and text manipulation tasks. This capability is essential in various programming scenarios, from form validation to data cleansing, making them invaluable in the programming toolkit.