On Mon, Nov 07, 2005 at 03:05:06PM -0800, Larry Wall wrote: > On Mon, Nov 07, 2005 at 02:47:05PM -0600, Patrick R. Michaud wrote: > : > : But for the :w issue, we can always solve it with the colon: > : > : > : > : \d:065 = A digit (cut) followed by "065" > : > > : > That doesn't extend to \d:woot, of course... > : > : It doesn't? I mean, isn't that a digit followed by "woot"? > > No, it's a digit followed by ":woot". Adverbs aren't currently > restricted to being at the front of a sequence. I think a backtracking > colon can't have an alphanumeric right after it or it's taken as > an adverb.
Oh. I was figuring that modifiers (:w, :i, etc.) would only appear at the beginning of a rule or the beginning of a group, and would be scoped to that rule/group. The examples in S05/A05 all display it in that manner. > We *could* restrict adverbs to the front. Would have to think about > the ramifications of that though... I would think it wouldn't be too much of an issue, since one can always introduce a group to provide a front for the modifier (and scopes it as well) -- i.e.: rx :w / the :i quick :i(0) brown :i fox :i(0) jumped / seems simpler as rw :w / the [:i quick] brown [:i fox] jumped / It's also nicer because that means a ':' not at the beginning of a rule/group is always a cut, regardless of what follows. And we also get \d:0123 as a cheap way of saying \d<?null>0123. (And the parsing of colon becomes simpler/faster because I don't have to do a procedural lookahead, but hey, that's beside the point. :-) Pm
