Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpwm | Hacker News Reader

> I personally prefer using "regular expression" in the language-theoretic sense and "regex" or "regexp" for related concepts in programming languages and software.

This is also what Larry Wall proposes:

> [...] Pattern Matching, generally having to do with what we call "regular expressions", which are only marginally related to real regular expressions. Nevertheless, the term has grown with the capabilities of our pattern matching engines, so I'm not going to try to fight linguistic necessity here. I will, however, generally call them "regexes" (or "regexen", when I'm in an Anglo-Saxon mood).

https://raku.org/archive/doc/design/apo/A05.html

View on HN

> (or "regexen", when I'm in an Anglo-Saxon mood)

There's some kind of idea going around that because the plural of "ox" is "oxen", plurals with -n must be triggered by a word ending in "x". So you see cutesy references to "boxen" or similar.

But -n is just an ordinary plural marker; the same ending that makes "oxen" the plural of "ox" also makes "kine" the plural of "cow" and "children" the plural of "child". (In those last two cases, the words are sporting two plural markers in sequence.)

>There's some kind of idea going around

It's not new, by any stretch. I remember seeing such many references in the early 2000s and beyond. Doing some vague poking around textfiles.com, I didn't pull any easy to find 1980s 'boxen' references. It almost looks like it might have been the addition of 'unix boxen' to the 'new hacker dictionary' by esr which spread the joke into the mid-90s communities. I wasn't online at that point myself, so I can't speak from any personal experience. But the various hacker zines etc are using 'boxen' by the later 90s and early 2000s, which would allow for it to have spread through the folks of the time finding and trolling through esr's version of the 'hacker dictionary'. https://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html complains about esr adding unix references, and does not include any boxen references that are found in the http://cd.textfiles.com/hackersencyc/ETC/MISC/JARG_331.TXT version folks in the 90s would likely have spread around.

edit: nope. definitely there in the 80s on usenet

so he was just encoding existing slang usage, rather than introducing it, on this point.

https://www.usenetarchives.com/view.php?id=net.wanted&mid=PD...

more edit: considered the second oldest boxen reference in the usenet archive is esr himself, maybe he was the one pushing it :)

https://www.usenetarchives.com/view.php?id=comp.sys.att&mid=...

I didn't say it was new. I said it was current. (And, um, unmotivated.)

We might also note that from the perspective of modern English, plurals in -en are more characteristic of Geoffrey Chaucer than of Alfred the Great. We preserve three such words: oxen, children, and brethren. But only one of those is an Anglo-Saxon form; in Old English, the plural forms of ċild and broþor are ċildru and broþru[1]. The -ens appeared later.

[1] "Brother" is a fairly irregular word, but there's no form ending in -n.

Well. You're on Hacker News. So I'm going to quote the Jargon File and then you'll stop complaining. Right, cobber?

> Further, note the prevalence of certain kinds of nonstandard plural forms. Some of these go back quite a ways; the TMRC Dictionary includes an entry which implies that the plural of `mouse' is {meeces}, and notes that the defined plural of `caboose' is `cabeese'. This latter has apparently been standard (or at least a standard joke) among railfans (railroad enthusiasts) for many years.

> On a similarly Anglo-Saxon note, almost anything ending in `x' may form plurals in `-xen' (see {VAXen} and {boxen} in the main text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated this way; e.g., `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are `frobbotzim' for the plural of `frobbozz' (see {frobnitz}) and `Unices' and `Twenices' (rather than `Unixes' and `Twenexes'; see {UNIX}, {TWENEX} in main text). But note that `Unixen' and `Twenexen' are never used; it has been suggested that this is because `-ix' and `-ex' are Latin singular endings that attract a Latinate plural. Finally, it has been suggested to general approval that the plural of `mongoose' ought to be `polygoose'.

> The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is generalization of an inflectional rule that in English is either an import or a fossil (such as the Hebrew plural ending `-im', or the Anglo-Saxon plural suffix `-en') to cases where it isn't normally considered to apply.

> or the Anglo-Saxon plural suffix `-en'

There is no Anglo-Saxon plural suffix -en; the suffix is -an.

> [1] "Brother" is a fairly irregular word, but there's no form ending in -n.

It's brethren, for the record.

That footnote is clearly talking about Old English.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com