From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:42:31 +0000 From: Eris Discordia To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-ID: <3998B2566B29AA706711647C@[192.168.1.2]> In-Reply-To: <16e2f33afcbcf3a8ce6274b0523454a8@quanstro.net> References: <16e2f33afcbcf3a8ce6274b0523454a8@quanstro.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Subject: Re: [9fans] non greedy regular expressions Topicbox-Message-UUID: 28dfcd3e-ead4-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 > there's a reason they're not called regularly expressions. As explained in the post by Brian L. Stuart it's a matter of "grammar" :-P > (if this were the definition, an expression's regularlyness would > depend on the target text, would it not?) Yes, and that _would_ be why you wouldn't craft a regex for matching in a text with a, say, single-digit frequency of some string. --On Monday, October 27, 2008 9:23 AM -0400 erik quanstrom wrote: >>> practical application. now there are big books on `regular expressions' >>> mainly because they are no longer regular but a big collection of ad-hoc >> >> I thought they were "regular" because they "regularly" occurred in the >> target text. Turns out other interpretations are possible. Though, mine >> has the advantage of being correct :-D > > there's a reason they're not called regularly expressions. > > (if this were the definition, an expression's regularlyness would > depend on the target text, would it not?) > > - erik > >