On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 09:29:38PM -0400, George Auch wrote:
Someone who actually knows something about computer science will hopefully give a better answer.
Hmmm... 'better' in this case is certainly debatable ;D
From 'Introduction to Computer Theory' Cohen, 1986, 823 pgs.
<snip>
L= {baa abbba bababa} is baa + abba + bababa (note: this line should be in bold type) if L = {aa ab ba bb}
<snip>
... all I can say is that I I took this 400 level course, Theory of Computing, a long time back after returning to college. It was ugly then, and still is... add to this a class in discrete mathematics and you have one great semester. Most of this was conveniently removed from memory a long time back.
Man, *that* must've freed some memory... ;) In any case, reading through the above, I realized that I'd been looking in the wrong direction. Because what I'm after is a *linguistic* explanation, not a technical one... So searching google for 'regular thesaurus' immediately came up with a number of pages spelling out 'regular'... As *this* bit f.x: Regular - ADJECTIVE: 1. Without imperfections or blemishes, as a line or contour: clean, perfect. See BEAUTIFUL. 2. Occurring quite often: common, everyday, familiar, frequent, routine, widespread. See USUAL. 3. Commonly practiced or used: accustomed, customary, habitual, usual, wonted. See USUAL 4. Having no change or variation: changeless, constant, equable, even, invariable, invariant, same, steady, unchanging, uniform, unvarying. See SAME. 5. Arranged or proceeding in a set, systematized pattern: methodic, methodical, orderly, systematic, systematical. See ABILITY, ORDER. 6. Characterized by or displaying symmetry, especially correspondence in scale or measure: balanced, proportional, proportionate, symmetric, symmetrical. See SAME. -of which 5. is obviously the more applicable of the senses... So unless someone has something to add, I'll just go on thinking that 'regular expressions' are 'ordered expressions', and declare this thread "solved"... :) As for the other interpretations of the word as listed, I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether regexes could be described as 'beatiful', 'usual', 'changeless', 'symmetric' or ... Thanks for your time Jon