On 2026-02-21 Morten Bo Johansen wrote: > Yes, that is a possibility. However, if I use word boundaries, it would > match only macros that are written without the leading dot and then we're > back to square one: In groff_mm I would get the matches I want, in groff_ms > not. Remember I call the manual page with the search expression from a > function, so it must work with a syntax I have decided. Having to type in > the expression afterwards in the pager at least partially defeats the > purpose of convenience.
I should add that pagers use different regexp engines, in fact less(1) alone uses different regexp libraries. Yours, Branden, uses posix, mine uses pcre2 and some incarnations of less(1) are built with no regexp capabilities at all. And then there is more(1) and most(1) ... Apropos lack of consistency! Therefore having the leading dot in the macro descriptions in all the manual pages would do away with the need for regular expressions. Now, of course this should not be done just to cater to me and my little editor extension which I am probably the only person on the planet using, anyway, but just for the sake of consistency. Regards, Morten
