Kleene star(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)