Word
regular expression
Definitions
01computing/text matching
n. a string of symbols used to find or change specific patterns of text in a document or code.
n. a sequence of characters defining a search pattern for use in pattern matching with strings, or for input validation.
“I used a regular expression to find all the email addresses in the long document.”
“The developer implemented a complex regular expression to validate that the user input followed the required alphanumeric format.”
Technical
Usage
Often abbreviated as 'regex' or 'regexp' in informal technical contexts.
Synonyms
02formal language theory
n. a mathematical way to describe a specific type of simple language used in computer science.
n. a notation representing a regular language, typically involving operations such as concatenation, alternation, and Kleene star iteration.
“In my computer science class, we learned how a regular expression relates to a finite automaton.”
“Theoretical computer science distinguishes between a true regular expression and the extended pattern-matching features found in modern programming languages.”
Academic · Technical
Usage
Used as a countable noun in mathematical and theoretical contexts.
Synonyms
Etymology
The term was coined by the American mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene in 1951 to describe the sets of strings generated by his formal notation for finite automata.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Domain
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/regular-expression