4 Mar
2024
4 Mar
'24
1:01 p.m.
Hi Ralph.
Ralph Corderoy <ralph(a)inputplus.co.uk> wrote:
Hi Arnold,
Quite true.
I learned regular expressions from Kernighan
& Plauger's book
"Software Tools". I was exposed to that book, Unix (v6 on a PDP-11)
and C programming (via K&R's book) all at the same time. This was in
the fall of 1980.
An excellent book. What I think you've not mentioned is that it
implements regular expressions. Being inside the black box can aid
understanding, including the performance of the matcher and the way the
regexp is best written for a particular matcher.
Kernighan and Pike's ‘The practice of
programming’ also briefly
implements some regexp functionality when talking about the power of
notation.
What I didn't quite remember when I wrote the earlier note was that
at the same time as I was learning C, Unix and software tools, I took
a compiler course, using the first edition of the dragon book, which
covered regular expressions, NFAs and DFAs.
It all came together at the same time.
Arnold