[TUHS] Re: regex early discussions

["Alan D. Salewski" <ads@salewski.email>]

On Sun, Mar 3, 2024, at 20:30, Will Senn wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I was wondering, what were the best early sources of information for 
> regexes and why did folks need to know them to use unix?
[...]
> Thanks,
>
> Will

I don't think I've seen in this thread mention of the 1968 CACM
article by Ken Thompson:

    "Regular Expression Search Algorithm"
    Ken Thompson
    Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., Murray Hill, New Jersey
    Communications of the ACM, Volume 11, Number 6, 1968-06

The abstract:
<quote>
    A method for locating specific character strings embedded in
    character text is described and an implementation of this method
    in the form of a compiler is discussed. The compiler accepts a
    regular expression as source language and produces an IBM 7094
    program as object language. The object program then accepts the
    text to be searched as input and produces a signal every time an
    embedded string in the text matches the given regular
    expression. Examples, problems, and solutions are also
    presented.
</quote>

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