On Sun, May 28, 2000 at 10:33:52PM -0400, David T-G wrote:
> % Ah, I see. It's ^~L "(alice|bob|carol)". Precedence would be a good
> % topic for the manual to go over quickly.
I think most Unix users (after struggling with bash, grep, etc.) develop
a feeling on where and how and what to quote.
> Whoops. Pardon me for jumping in here, but shouldn't any parser be able
> to detect a ( and put everything up until the matching ) in a separate
> precedence?
It's not so simple as it sounds. There are many quoting issues, like \(
or [abc)def], that are not exactly matching parentheses.
> I still don't see why the parser would break the expression
> into three ORs with an ( in one and a ) in another unless the code is
> just plain broken -- but I can't read C enough to have any idea :-) Note
> that that's not a flame of the code or developers, especially since I'm
> in no position to provide a patch to "fix" the behavior...
The code is indeed broken. Try, for example, this pattern:
(~b "default[)]")
Mutt just scans for the first matching `)' ignoring any quotes, escapes,
etc.
OK, I've got to go. Expect a patch in the evening.
Marius Gedminas
--
"Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff
on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)"
(Linus Torvalds, about his failing hard drive on linux.cs.helsinki.fi)
