The book, two pages later, gives a left-longest implementation of matchstar. See https://archive.org/details/practiceofprogra0000kern/page/226/mode/2up?q=matchs

The book, two pages later, gives a left-longest implementation of matchstar. See https://archive.org/details/practiceofprogra0000kern/page/226/mode/2up?q=matchstar https://archive.org/details/practiceofprogra0000kern/page/22... . > extending this implementation The exercises at the end of the chapter ask the student to extension the implementation along these lines. Including support for utf8. > exponential nature Both the essay and the book highlight this issue. The latter comments that some commercial greps (at the time) also had exponential behavior. https://archive.org/details/practiceofprogra0000kern/page/226/mode/2up?q=exponential https://archive.org/details/practiceofprogra0000kern/page/22...