On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 12:38 AM, Petr Baudis <pasky@xxxxxxx> wrote: > 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. ;-) Yes. > 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? Yes, that's probably true. I reinstated that text. [...] Cheers, Michael PS Petr: Many other good ideas for fixes; maybe someone will pick this up. Not me, at the moment. -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git man-pages online: http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online_pages.html Found a bug? http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html -- 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
