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ELI5: How are these massive adblock lists kept updated so regularly? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/explainlikeimfive@lemmy.world
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Do they get some kind of real-time feed that tells them "hey this URL popped up in the web today, but it is a tracker, so block it", or is this exercise is mostly helped by the crowd ?

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[–] 75 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Regular expression magic.

A lot of ad networks have a pattern to the name or the window the advert appears in.

Using regular expression you can find just the adwindow and ignore the actual content.

Now what is regular expression? A wizard language.
ask any programmer about RE after 4 beers and watch the hate wash over their face.

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  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I love regex, I'm not even gonna lie. To be fair, my expressions haven't been 50+ characters long, but still.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Regex absolutely has many great uses. The issue is people trying to use for things they shouldn't. Then it suddenly becomes a nightmare.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Can I parse [X]HTML with regex?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You can parse any plaintext with regex, but I would recommend using XPath for that use case, instead.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    The first language I learned was Perl, so regex are very close to my heart. I'm also quite excitable when I drink (I'm a happy drunk), so ask me and I'll give you a very enthusiastic explanation while not noticing that you aren't interested in my detailed explanation and examples. Do it. I dare ya.

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