From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Sam / text search query
From: rog@vitanuova.com
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Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 17:21:24 +0100
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from /sys/doc/sam.ms:

: Egrep expressions are arguably too complicated for an interactive
: editor -- certainly it would make sense if all the special characters
: were two-character sequences, so that most of the punctuation
: characters wouldn't have peculiar meanings -- but for an interesting
: command language, full regular expressions are necessary, and egrep
: defines the full regular expression syntax for UNIX programs.  Also,
: it seemed superfluous to define a new syntax, since various UNIX
: programs (ed, egrep and vi) define too many already.

i have to say i wouldn't mind a new regexp syntax with fewer metachars.