Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!garnet!weemba From: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: what should egrep '|root' print? (syntax/semantics) Message-ID: <14556@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: 21 Sep 88 08:55:33 GMT References: <1988Sep20.043728.20198@utzoo.uucp> Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central Lines: 15 In-reply-to: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) In article <1988Sep20.043728.20198@utzoo.uucp>, henry@utzoo (Henry Spencer) writes: > Alas, I am also sympathetic >to the argument that (1) it would be an unfortunate inconsistency, and >(2) programs that generate regexps might have to go out of their way to >avoid generating these magic sequences. Argh. Any thoughts? From a theoretician's point of view, these are the only arguments. I ran into null regexps in Gnews, when I generalized from KILLing based on newsgroup names to KILLing based on newsgroup regexps. I was so pleased when I realized that the null regexp would match all newsgroup names, and thus provide for global KILLs. It never occurred to me that there might be regexp handlers that would not take this: it's plain unnatural. ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720