Kleene closure

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

Kleene star
Kleene closure

   <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)