regular expression

Meanings

• Noun

  A sequence of characters that forms a search pattern, mainly used in text processing with regular expressions engines.

  - "The regex pattern matches any string that contains the word 'apple' followed by the character '.' and ends with the string 'banana'."
  - "Regular expressions are used to validate email addresses and ensure they follow a specific format."

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Synonyms

regex , regexp

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Variants

List of all variants of regular expression that leads to same result
expression , expressional , expressions , gender expression , gender expressions , self-expression , self-expressions , self-expressive , find expression , freedom of expression , give expression to , re-express , re-expressed , re-expresses , re-expressing , re-expression , re-expressions , reexpress , reexpressed , reexpresses , reexpressing , reexpression , reexpressions

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Etymology

origin and the way in which meanings have changed throughout history.

The term 'regular expression' was first introduced in the early 1950s with the development of text processing and pattern matching algorithms.

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Trivia

Any details, considerations, events or pieces of information regarding the word

1. The first regular expression engine was developed in 1956 by Ken Thompson.

2. The term 'regex' is commonly used as a shorthand for 'regular expression'.

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Related Concepts

informations on related concepts or terms closely associated with the word. Discuss semantic fields or domains that the word belongs to

1. Regular Expression Engine: A software component that processes regular expressions and searches or replaces text based on the specified pattern.

2. Metaccharacters: Special characters used in regular expressions to define specific search patterns, such as '.' for any character and '*' for zero or more occurrences.

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Culture

Any cultural, historical, or symbolic significance of the word. Explore how the word has been used in literature, art, music, or other forms of expression.

Regular expressions have been extensively used in various fields such as computer science, mathematics, and linguistics. They have been featured in popular culture, including movies like 'The Matrix' and books like 'The Art of Unix Programming'.

How to Memorize "regular expression"

1. visualize
   

   - Imagine a sequence of characters that represents a search pattern for a specific text.
   - Visualize the regular expression engine processing the text and matching the search pattern.

2. associate
   

   - Associate regular expressions with text processing and pattern matching.
   - Think of regular expressions as a set of rules for finding specific patterns in text.

3. mnemonics
   

   - Remember the acronym 'GREP' (Global Regular Expression Print) to help remember the purpose of regular expressions.
   - Use the mnemonic 'Every Good Boy Does Fine' to remember the order of the metaccharacters '.*+?'.

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