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0 pointsxigoi1y ago0 comments

Why are they called regular expressions if they can parse non-regular languages?

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3 comments · 2 top-level

donaldihunter1y ago· 1 in thread

The word 'regular' comes from the mathematical roots of automata and finite state machines.

Which have a one to one correspondence with regular languages, so this isn’t actually an answer to the question.

db48x1y ago

Literally, Larry Wall was adding things to regexes all the way back before the release of Perl 2.

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