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From: Eris Discordia <eris.discordia@gma...>
Subject: Re: [9fans] non greedy regular expressions
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:42:31 +0000

> 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 
<quanstro@qua...> 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
>
>