Raising a dead topic here, but I'm a latecomer to the community, I missed it first time around
Anyway, AceText is a great program. I used Clipmate for years -- and still hail it as the grandfather of clipboard extenders and without a doubt the most robust/feature rich -- but has become a bit too robust for my taste. AceText came along just in time -- it's featherlight, powerful and has great keyboard support. As a long time fan of JGSoft's products, I found its interface very easy to get used to -- his products are semi-homogeneous in that way. Yay AceText. I use it daily -- as well as CH+S -- the latter is especially handy with ctrl+alt+q 's menu.
Where RegexBuddy is concerned, I'm not sure why it's his one product that has no trial (even his 150.00 grep tool has a trial! ) -- but I've used a lot of regex applications and RegexBuddy is hands down the best.
RegexCoach is probably my second choice -- but it's no RegexBuddy.
That said, if you are completely green to regular expressions, RegexBuddy isn't your ticket out of learning them. While it's the most user-friendly regex editor I've used, you still need to be familiar with the logic of regex to make it work its magic. It comes with a great tutorial, though -- and JGSoft's own
Regex Website provides a great guide for novices as well as a refresher for seasoned users.
I really, really enjoy working with regular expressions -- which is a big reason I'm such a fan of JGSoft's products -- they're all very well support regex -- EditPad Pro's find/replace box even has regex syntax highlighting! Mmm, Regex. ( I know, regex love isn't natural . . . oh well, what can you do?)