Reuben, > Heh. My point precisely: 3 functions and 50 lines versus 1 flag and 5 > lines (RE_PLAIN) to solve the same problem
I agree that if we had the opportunity to invent regex APIs from scratch now, all 4 syntaxes (literals, wildcards, basic regular expression, extended regular expression) would be worth supporting equally. But the fact is that POSIX standardizes the regex API, and therefore there is a border between "in glibc" and "outside glibc". Functionality in glibc is available at no cost; functionality outside glibc requires additional link options and increased startup time or a 50KB bigger executable. Bruno
