> Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2002 18:55:42 +1000
> From: Erik Christiansen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: most commonly used regex lib for awk/frep/mutt/sed?
>
> On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 01:47:37PM +0200, Sven Guckes wrote:
> > > Is this too ambitious a wish?
> >
> > unfortunately, yes.
>
> Ricardo SIGNES is a man of vision, I think. If it is practical to
> link in a preferred regex suite, as described in his post on this
> thread, to allow the ERE-proficient amongst us to escape the
> frustrations and limitations of BREs, then my only questions are:
>
> o Do I have to dust off my rusty but revivable 'C' skills to help get
> this moving?
someone *will* need to do it. i'd definitely love to see this
inlined as a ./configure knob, but a (probably quite hard to
maintain) patch looks more likely.
(oh gosh, how i regret i don't know enough c)
> o Should vim be fixed first? 'cos I think Roman is definitely right.
> (There's still no magic that allows "+" in lieu of "\+")
vim needs a fix really badly imo, but i don't think any such thing
will happen (soon), and even if Bram jumpstarted replacing the
strange cousin of re that's used in vim, it would delay the work
in mutt too much.
> > let's assume you could make this change within a day.
> > how many setup files, scripts, shell aliases etc
> > would have to be adjusted? can you give this service?
>
> As Ricardo implies, let's not change any. It would require that
> people change, and I recognise that it is only in accepting the existing
> tower of babel, that we have any hope of providing a simpler consistent
> interface for those who prefer it.
if mutt could be ./configure'd --with-pcre (nondefault, of course),
there'd be virtually no problems with confusion between regexps
found in various published .muttrc's and the syntax mutt linked with
pcre actually expected.
> > besides, would everyone gain from this?
>
> Oh-oh, is this devil's advocacy?
>
> Whether it is:
>
> o The time lost by countless users individually clawing their way up the
> learning curve of a panoply of regex dialects, just to do a simple
> job.
>
> o The countless hours spent by worthy individuals reinventing the wheel
> for their otherwise great tool. (When the time could be spent on
> features which help users.)
>
> o The resulting bugs, fixes, and re-releases of these tools, impacting
> both developer and user.
>
> o The newsgroup and mailing list traffic due to regex knowledge already
> acquired not being portable. (Much energy has also been expended on
> the procmail mailling list, examining how their dialect can be made
> stranger still, as various deficiencies of the older syntax are
> addressed.)
>
> o The confusion sown by inconsistency. Beginner pain is exacerbated by
> behavioural variability. Lessons learned on one dialect must be
> unlearned on others. (After approximately a decade, I still send
> stuff to grep, rather than use vim's irregular expressions.)
>
> there is benefit enough for all.
i'll sign this.
--
FreeBSD 4.6-STABLE
1:21PM up 2 days, 20:58, 8 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
