Re: [9fans] non greedy regular expressions

[Eris Discordia <eris.discordia@gmail.com>]

> It is merely the traditional POSIX flavor.  Some people like that
> flavor, some don't.

Understandable.

> It is more that Perl simply was never part of the picture for the people
> who develop(ed) and use(d) Plan 9.  It's like asking why the paper on
> the Plan 9 C compiler doesn't state that C++ classes are not available.

Very reasonable.

> if you really want Perl, you know where to get it.

We all do. We all did [get it].

> Me, I'm pretty happy with the traditional shell + sed + grep + awk
> combinations, but then again, I'm biased, particularly towards awk.
> :-)

Yeah, I've seen your (g)awk activities on other lists. Good luck, and
thanks.

--On Monday, October 27, 2008 11:08 PM +0200 Aharon Robbins
<arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:

>> > As other mails have pointed out, anything that isn't leftmost longest
>> > has weird semantics.  Non-greedy operators are mostly syntactic sugar.
>>
>> Is (leftmost-longest + all-greedy operators) syntactic salt then?
>
> It is merely the traditional POSIX flavor.  Some people like that
> flavor, some don't.
>
>> > Not in the least. The Plan 9 regexp library in fact gives you close to
>> > the same nirvana; an automata that has DFA speed characteristics with
>> > the NFA's ability to capture sub texts.
>>
>> Does regexp(n) also give the lowlife any hint of why it should behave
>> differently from Perl? Friedl's book doesn't, but it has good reason.
>
> It is more that Perl simply was never part of the picture for the people
> who develop(ed) and use(d) Plan 9.  It's like asking why the paper on
> the Plan 9 C compiler doesn't state that C++ classes are not available.
>
> The long-time users of Plan 9 were using Unix before Perl even came along;
> for reasons having to do with both taste and the theoretical soundness,
> they saw no reason to try to support the Perl features.  After all,
> if you really want Perl, you know where to get it.
>
> Me, I'm pretty happy with the traditional shell + sed + grep + awk
> combinations, but then again, I'm biased, particularly towards awk.
> :-)
>
> Arnold
>