"PackRat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Never having been in a formal computer science program, I have wondered 
> the following for years (books don't tell you these kinds of things):
>
> For those who have studied regular expressions in classes, did 
> teachers/professors pronounce the "g" in "regex" like the "g" in "get" 
> or like the "j" in "jet"?  Thanks in advance!
>
> Harvey

In English, many letter pairs (such as sh, ch, ph, th, ge, gi, ce, ci, etc.)
are treater specially. However, such treatment is generally NOT invoked
at boundaries where two words are glued together.
For eample, 'th' in 'rathole', 'ph' in 'cupholder', 'ge' in 'regexp'
are all treated is they were hyphenated 'rat-hole', 'cup-holder', 'reg-exp',
and thus separate disconnected (and non-interacting) phonemes.

Since 'regexp' is a contraction of 'regular expression', The g should be
hard, as it is in 'regular'. On the other hand, the g in 'Reg', as a
contraction of 'Reginald' is soft, because an i is implied, even though
it is not explicitly present.

-- Mark D. Niemiec <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


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