Mark Gardner<p><span class="h-card"><a href="https://plush.city/@smonff" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>smonff</span></a></span> <span class="h-card"><a href="https://chirp.social/@Perl" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>Perl</span></a></span> Y’all know I’m the first to crow about unique <a href="https://social.sdf.org/tags/Perl" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Perl</span></a> features, but <a href="https://social.sdf.org/tags/RegularExpressions" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>RegularExpressions</span></a>’ syntax of ^ for the start of a line or string and $ for the end dates back at least to <a href="https://social.sdf.org/tags/Unix" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Unix</span></a> co-author Ken Thompson’s rewrite of the `qed` text editor for the <a href="https://social.sdf.org/tags/CTSS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CTSS</span></a> operating system on the IBM 7090 <a href="https://social.sdf.org/tags/mainframe" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>mainframe</span></a> at <a href="https://social.sdf.org/tags/BellLabs" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BellLabs</span></a> around 1970. (Perl creator Larry Wall was a teenager at the time.)</p><p><a href="https://social.sdf.org/tags/retrocomputing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>retrocomputing</span></a> <a href="https://social.sdf.org/tags/regex" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>regex</span></a></p>