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this is literally how 'lex' works. the one written in 1987 by Vern Paxson.
by convolvatron 1y ago
this is literally how 'lex' works. the one written in 1987 by Vern Paxson.
- jlokier 1y agoThe original is 'lex', written in 1975 by Mike Lesk and Eric Schmidt. Yes, that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. 1987 was the clone, 'flex' :-) It did "compiling the regex into regular code, which can then be optimized by the compiler" before the C programming language as we know it was created. I think 'lex' was compiling regex to C before the C language even had 'struct' types, 'printf' or 'malloc'.
- spectraldrift 1y agoSo I'm only 40 years behind! It's amazing how early innovations like this seamlessly fade into the background and can be taken for granted by folks like myself.