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Mastering Regular Expressions - Table of Contents

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Page xxii<br />

discovered (many <strong>of</strong> which have consequently been fixed). My guiding principle<br />

has been, as Ken Lunde so succinctly put it when I was grumbling one day: "you<br />

do the research so your readers don't have to."<br />

Originally, I thought the whole project would take a year at the very most. Boy,<br />

was I wrong. Besides the research necessitated by my own ignorance, a few<br />

months were lost as priorities shifted after the Kobe earthquake. Also, there's<br />

something to be said for experience. I wrote, and threw out, two versions <strong>of</strong> this<br />

book before feeling that I had something worthy to publish. As I found out, there's<br />

a big difference between publishing a book and firing <strong>of</strong>f a posting to Usenet. It's<br />

been almost two and a half years.<br />

Shoulders to Stand On<br />

As part <strong>of</strong> my research, both about regular expressions and their history, I have<br />

been extremely lucky in the knowledge <strong>of</strong> others that I have been able to tap.<br />

Early on, Tom Wood <strong>of</strong> Cygnus Systems opened my eyes to the various ways that<br />

a regular-expression match engine might be implemented. Vern Paxson (author <strong>of</strong><br />

flex) and Henry Spencer (regular-expression god) have also been a great help. For<br />

enlightenment about some <strong>of</strong> the very early years, before regular expressions<br />

entered the realm <strong>of</strong> computers, I am indebted to Robert Constable and Anil<br />

Nerode. For insight into their early computational history, I'd like to thank Brian<br />

Kernighan (co-author <strong>of</strong> awk), Ken Thompson (author <strong>of</strong> ed and co-creator <strong>of</strong><br />

Unix), Michael Lesk (author <strong>of</strong> lex), James Gosling (author <strong>of</strong> the first Unix<br />

version <strong>of</strong> Emacs, which was also the first to support regular expressions),<br />

Richard Stallman (original author <strong>of</strong> Emacs, and current author <strong>of</strong> GNU Emacs),<br />

Larry Wall (author <strong>of</strong> rn, patch, and Perl), Mark Biggar (Perl's maternal uncle),<br />

and Don Libes (author <strong>of</strong> Life with Unix, among others).

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