i apologise.

i was in fact referring to the qaddafi torture test (another victim of my stroke).
thanks to rich for catching that slip.

> On Aug 1, 2020, at 6:31 AM, Richard Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> during the mid 80s, i was preparing one of the first invited talks for USENIX on the subject of regular expressions.
> i had concocted a massive RE that matched all the known spellings of saddam hussein. (it was complicated,
> 
> I wonder if that was the inspiration for the Qaddafi torture test; see http://sources.vsta.org/comp.sources.unix/volume9/fastgrep/part01 <http://sources.vsta.org/comp.sources.unix/volume9/fastgrep/part01> (June 87)
> 
> The first time I saw "p[-1]" was looking at some regexp source.  It blew/expanded my mind.