Key Terms
- brittle code
- Code that works when the input data is in a particular format but is prone to breakage if there is some deviation from the correct format. We call this “brittle code” because it is easily broken.
- greedy matching
- The notion that the “+” and “*” characters in a regular expression expand outward to match the largest possible string.
- grep
- A command available in most Unix systems that searches through text files looking for lines that match regular expressions. The command name stands for "Generalized Regular Expression Parser".
- regular expression
- A language for expressing more complex search strings. A regular expression may contain special characters that indicate that a search only matches at the beginning or end of a line or many other similar capabilities.
- wild card
- A special character that matches any character. In regular expressions the wild-card character is the period.