Thread by @analyticsnerd

Pro Tip >> Here is how to become a #regex (regular expressions) power user overnight...

Regular expressions (also called regex) are used to check for a pattern in a string.

For example ^Colou?r$ is a regular expression that matches both the string: 'color' and 'colour'.

Regex comes in many flavours based on the type of syntax being used. These flavours are called the regex engine.

The most popular regex engines are PCRE (PHP), JavaScript, Python and Golang.

Different regex engines support different types of syntax, and the meaning of metacharacters may change depending on the regex engine being used.

Thus, a regular expression considered valid under one regex engine may not be considered valid under another.

Since the regex engine used by #GA4 and GTM is 'JavaScript', you should always use 'JavaScript' as the regex engine before testing your regular expressions for GA/GTM.

Regex is commonly used to set up complex triggers in GTM, create a regex table and custom JavaScript variables, exclude traffic from an IP address range via filters etc.

However, the biggest problem is creating the correct regex.

Here ChatGPT (an AI-enabled chatbot) can help.

You can ask ChatGPT to create a JavaScript regex that matches your specified pattern.

Then test the regex supplied by ChatGPT via a tool like regex101 .com/. It's likely to work.

You no longer need a PHD in regex to use it.

**If you like this post, share it with others and follow me."**