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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!hao!hplabs!sdcrdcf!jonab
From: jonab@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Jonathan Biggar)
Newsgroups: net.bugs.v7,net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: awk vs. regular expressions starting with equal sign
Message-ID: <1551@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Dec-84 15:21:31 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.1551
Posted: Thu Dec 13 15:21:31 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Dec-84 05:15:41 EST
References: <4770@utzoo.UUCP>
Reply-To: jonab@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Jonathan Biggar)
Organization: System Development Corp. R+D, Santa Monica
Lines: 12
Xref: watmath net.bugs.v7:177 net.unix-wizards:11068

In article <4770@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>There is a fundamental lexical ambiguity in awk:  when you see "/=",
>is this the divide-by-and-assign operator, or the start of a regular
>expression which happens to begin with an equal sign?  Awk thinks it
>is the operator, which means you can't start a regular expression with
>an equal sign, ever.  To really write such a pattern, you have to resort
>to schemes like "/.=/" or "/.*=/".  How annoying.  I can see no real fix.

You should use "/[=]/", it is better.

Jon Biggar
{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdccsu3}!sdcrdcf!jonab