[Unix] (alt.: regex or reg-ex)
1. Common written and spoken abbreviation for regular expression, one
of the wildcard patterns used, e.g., by Unix utilities such as
grep(1), sed(1), and awk(1). These use conventions similar to but
more elaborate than those described under {glob}. For purposes of
this lexicon, it is sufficient to note that regexps also allow
complemented character sets using ^; thus, one can specify `any
non-alphabetic character' with [^A-Za-z].
2. Name of a well-known PD regexp-handling package in portable C,
written by revered Usenetter Henry Spencer.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {awk}{BNF}{glob}{RE}]