If you write software, you probably use regular expressions frequently in your code, in developer tooling and even maybe in database queries.
But where did they come from? How did the token ^ come to mean “the start of a line”? You might know that “PCRE” means “Perl Compatible Regular Expression” but why is Perl singled out? And maybe you’re aware that the developers of golang were originally wary about including regular expressions in their language design. Why? Are regular expressions – gasp – dangerous?
In this talk we will examine the historical origins of regular expressions and various implementations of regular expressions in programming languages old and new(er). We will discuss why some regular expressions are “bad” and how inefficiencies can be avoided or minimized.
Jade Allen
Nova Labs, Software Developer
@avocadoSuperFan
Jade has been a software developer and dev-ops person for a really long time. She is interested in functional programming, distributed computing and computing history topics. She writes mostly Erlang for her day job.
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despite all the little issues, fun and great talk!
28:43 I am really happy I stuck with this lecture, and this nice lady, and reached Alfred and EGREP.
Should have read the description instead of just the title… It's really "All about historical origins of regular expressions"
Wonderful, wonderful talk! Love intelligent, knowledgeable speakers who are so enthusiastic about their subject that can't not go on a tangent. The Heinlein pun was super fun too.
Awesome talk, thank you! Indeed wish Jade had more time!) Demand the 3 hour version with all the side tracks!)))
Dr Philip Hazel wrote PCRE at Cambridge University in the late 1990s. In the older days of the Phoenix operating system (1980 or so), I used his ZED editor every day. When I approached him to ask if I could see the source code for it, he kindly steered me towards the BCPL version which was easier to understand than IBM 370/165 assembler.
Who would have thought that regular expressions could be funny?
ahahahahaha that was a rollercoaster! wonderful talk, wish Jade had had more time 😉