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I want to know what is more standard way to call regular expression in short way. I have seen both, regex and regexp.
Google says regex has almost 2 as much hits that regexp, but it depends on way I search it (when I add "regular expression" after the word, "regex" becomes "regex regular expression", the result is differend). And on stackexchange there is regex tag. :)
What is more proper way to shorten it?
Perhaps it does not matter. :) But thanks for answer.
There's no right or wrong abbreviation here. It'll mostly be influenced by what APIs you're working with:
The fact that Jeffrey Friedl, author of the excellent Mastering Regular Expressions, lives at regex.info is good enough for me: I tend to call them regexes. But I keep this close at hand just in case I change my mind later...
s/\bregex\b/$&p/gi;
perl -le 'print ref(qr/re/)'. Or maybe its regex? "regex" wins out over "regexp" by a wide margin in man perlre.
Aug 20, 2011 at 16:37
// in Perl either. :) It was a general point about the various abbreviations or other conventions used between languages.
Sep 13, 2011 at 12:52
As some indication - there's a Regex class in .NET and regex package in Java; not Regexp. Two fairly large 'ecosystems'. This by itself means more to me than as if some committee, somewhere, decided it this way or that way.
There is no standard that dictates this. As to what is more common, Google says regex vs. regexp by some 13.8 vs 9.8 million finds.
Regex is much more common, and you might get an odd glance or two if you say Regexp.
I have never before this thread seen it shortened to regexp and always seen it as regex. Just to add to the list, the new C++ Standard has <regex>, not <regexp>.
what's more standard depends on the predominant language of the folks you're talking to, I would argue. Correct above about Regex in .NET and Java, but Ruby uses the Regexp class for regular expressions.
My answer is more morphological. Consider yourself as the first person who wants to provide an abbreviation for this concept (Definitely regex or regexp both come from somewhere and haven't been with us since Adam), and you know that it should come from regular and expression.
My dictionary tells me that reg. is an abbreviated form of regularly and exp. is a shorthand of express. Thus if you want to follow the rules of abbreviations, REGEXP seems more structural. However, forming new words (neologism as they call it) is not always straight and often is done by people who are not linguists. Considering these issues, to make a name which with a more aesthetically appealing pronunciation, you can create REGEX.
Also as a note, StackExchange editor considers regex as wrong spell, while regexp is fine :)
