I asked for recommendations for Regex editors on stackoverflow a while ago. Following is one of the replies:

What is "good" depends on what is most useful to you. For me, though, these are the key features for a good regex editor (besides the ability to test and create regular expressions, of course, which is a prerequisite to be called a "regex editor" :-) :

1. Displays matches hierarchically with captured groups.
2. Explains/analyzes an entered regex in plain English, showing a hierarchical tree.
3. Translates your regex into code for a language of your choice.

RegexBuddy, as @Max mentioned, does all these but there is also a free alternative, Expresso that also does them very well. These two utilities are the only ones I have found with the crucial ability to explain a regex.

The features sound very attractive to me. But later I found the two are for Windows. I tried to install Expresso, the free one, via Wine, but met some trouble, about which I asked in another post.

1. So I was wondering if in Ubuntu there are some applications comparable to RegexBuddy and Expresso?
2. If it is required to install .NET Framework in order to install Expresso, is it still worth to install Expresso on Ubuntu?

Thanks and regards!