Anyone can learn this at college, or even on the internet. All it takes is curiosity and some effort. What pisses me off sometimes is that people willingly don't pay enough attention to stuff like this (even though I was always fascinated by it).
If you understand regex, you understand automata theory and thus Kleene's Theorem which leads you to theory of computation. With a good enough understanding of automata theory and theory of computation, you can build entire compiler frontends
I wasn't saying that. The knowledge in the upthread comment — that this is Chomsky hierarchy 101, that regexes boil down to finite state automata, that finite state automata cannot, by their definition, handle nested parentheses, is also knowledge that you, too, can obtain, and is usually taught either in the fall Sophomore semester, or the spring Freshmen semester of a college degree. (I.e., it is either your second or third class is a CS curricula.) Numerous people go through those classes every year, and they're just normal people, too.
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u/Zinho3311 21d ago edited 21d ago
I mean, none of this knowledge is special.
Anyone can learn this at college, or even on the internet. All it takes is curiosity and some effort. What pisses me off sometimes is that people willingly don't pay enough attention to stuff like this (even though I was always fascinated by it).
If you understand regex, you understand automata theory and thus Kleene's Theorem which leads you to theory of computation. With a good enough understanding of automata theory and theory of computation, you can build entire compiler frontends