tool

The latest versions of Zend Framework come with a handy little tool that gets you up and running with a basic Zend Framework install within a few moments. When you have downloaded Zend Framework you will notice that in minimal and full there is a directory called bin. This seems to be intended to contain lots of different tools, but at the moment it contains three files that are part of Zend Tool.

The important file in this directory is zf.php which is the actual core of the tool. The other two files are used depending on what operating system you are running. If you are running Windows then it is zf.bat that will be used, otherwise it is zf.sh that is important.

Regular expressions are a very useful tool for any programmer wanting to validate input, format strings, change words, reformat data or even split apart a string into an array. However, when you are starting out, writing them it can be hard going, they are not very easy to learn and the only way to really understand them is to practice, practice, practice.

This is where reWork steps in. It is a fully functional online regular expression workbench that will allow you to plug the expression and the text in one end, and it will show you exactly what is being matched. This simple JavaScript program is far better than any stand alone application I have seen and has more functionality than you could even think about.