regexp

/regeksp/ , n. [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.

