Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: what should egrep '|root' print? (syntax/semantics) Message-ID: <1988Sep20.043728.20198@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <44414@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> <68203@sun.uucp> <8202@alice.UUCP> <410@quintus.UUCP> <8209@alice.UUCP> <857@yunexus.UUCP> Date: Tue, 20 Sep 88 04:37:28 GMT In article <857@yunexus.UUCP> oz@yunexus.UUCP (Ozan Yigit) writes: >Any thoughts, and/or some real reason against (foo|) ?? Well, personally, I'd dearly love to be able to use (| and |) as metasymbols, since (a) one highly desirable extension to my regexp package would be the beginning/end-of-identifier metasymbols found in many implementations, (b) I am deeply opposed to declaring more unbackslashed characters to be metasymbols, and (c) I am even more deeply opposed to declaring *any* backslashed characters to be metasymbols. There are other possibilities, exploiting sequences that are syntax errors at the moment, but none of them is nearly as pretty. (Not a trivial issue, given that users have to remember whatever sequence gets chosen.) 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? -- NASA is into artificial | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology stupidity. - Jerry Pournelle | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu