Hi, On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 11:22:09AM +0100, Simon Oosthoek wrote: > If I were on the POSIX committee, I'd propose perl REs as the next > "modern" RE, but I'd not obsolete the basic RE at all, because in 95% > of the uses they are sufficient. > Perl REs are easy to type, well documented and powerful. Also > implementations already exist and are very well tested on probably all > Unix platforms. I doubt that you will succeed in adding a third regexp mode at this point, but the POSIX development process seems very open, so feel free to propose this: http://www.opengroup.org/austin/ > Anyway, the point of this e-mail: > - the current page is awful, hard to read and ambiguous > - the implied POSIX decision to obsolete basic REs is bad > - I would not recommend this manpage to anyone trying to understand > REs I agree with most of your points, but I'm sure Michael is aware of the issues as well - what would probably help were actual patches. ;-) A random set of working item ideas: * Don't use modern/obsolete terms since they are unwarranted and confusing - they seem to push an agenda that has nothing to do with the reality * Avoid (!) since they disturb the text severly, IMHO - discuss extensions at the end; this is something that's even very difficult to do for me since I don't actually understand many of the (!)s * The page should be divided into subsections, with examples at the end of each subsection * Atom should be explained before bound * Back reference should be mentioned before basic regexes (glibc supports it for ERE too) * | is supported in BRE too in glibc * SEE ALSO should have perlre(1) (sic) reference * The AUTHOR paragraph hidden might violate the page licence? * Wound boundaries syntax is commented out, but a real one is supported, using \b, \B, \< and \> * Plenty of other extensions available too, e.g. \w and \s (see regcomp.c:peek_token()) * On a related note, re_set_syntax() should be documented (grep(1) has nice, concise and incomplete regex description.) -- Petr "Pasky" Baudis The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just terrible. -- Jean Kerr -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
