History
The first computer programs to use pattern matching were text editors. At Bell Labs, Ken Thompson extended the seeking and replacing features of the QED editor to accept regular expressions. Early programming languages with pattern matching constructs include SNOBOL from 1962, SASL from 1976, NPL from 1977, and KRC from 1981. The first programming language with tree-based pattern matching features was Fred McBride's extension of LISP, in 1970.
See also: Regular expression#HistoryRead more about this topic: Pattern Matching
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)