From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: scj@yaccman.com (Steve Johnson) Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2017 15:06:35 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Regular Expressions (was Re: origin of the name 'glob') In-Reply-To: Message-ID: If you haven't seen it, check out Ken Thompson's brilliant paper on compiling regular expressions.  The date was 1968... In effect, he built a JIT to do regular expression searches (on an IBM 7094, no less!). https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwjika38mP3UAhVT2WMKHd3FAEcQFggoMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fing.edu.uy%2Finco%2Fcursos%2Fintropln%2Fmaterial%2Fp419-thompson.pdf&usg=AFQjCNFTSoOmBGBOl-DdCqUAv5dLLuuQPg The earliest reference is a paper by Kleene in 1956.   In fact, I recall that * was sometimes called "the Kleene star" in the day... Steve ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Winalski" To:"ron minnich" Cc:"The Eunuchs Hysterical Society" Sent:Sun, 9 Jul 2017 17:55:50 -0400 Subject:[TUHS] Regular Expressions (was Re: origin of the name 'glob') On 7/9/17, ron minnich wrote: >> > All the DEC-10 and 11 operating systems I used had that wildcard, as well > as IIRC even the PDP-8, maybe someone can confirm the -8. > > It would have been nice had RE's been the standard way to glob files, but, > that said, when I mention .*.c to people instead of *.c they don't much > like it. So when were REs first designed and implemented? I would imagine that they came about as a way to extend the old '*' and '?' wildcard syntax, but that is only a guess. -Paul W. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: