To continue the history course from the previous section, Perl was one of the first general-purpose programming languages to bake regexes into its core functionality.

a nonzero chance of victory

The overall sentiment that prevailed throughout the passage of the Bill was that there was no place for pontificating about red letter law

The face which emerged was not reassuring. It was blunt and grey, the nose springing thick and flat from high on the frontal bone of the forehead, whilst his eyes were narrow slits of dark in a tight bandage of tissue. […].