< text > (Or "Kleene closure", named after Stephen Kleene ) The postfix "*" operator used in regular expressions , Extended Backus-Naur Form , and similar formalisms to specify a match for zero or more occurrences of the preceding expression. For example, the regular expression "be*t" would match the string "bt", "bet", "beet", "beeeeet", and so on.
(2000-07-26)