From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:53:37 +0000 From: Eris Discordia To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <200810272108.m9RL8AI4015465@skeeve.com> References: <200810272108.m9RL8AI4015465@skeeve.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Subject: Re: [9fans] non greedy regular expressions Topicbox-Message-UUID: 29e5037a-ead4-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 > 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 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 >