From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jim Choate To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] sam command language In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 10:55:02 -0500 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 624ef37c-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 On Mon, 6 Oct 2003, Rob Pike wrote: > long ago, i considered making ^ and $ mean this in sam. they clearly > need to mean beginning and end of line at the top level, but when we > x down, maybe they should mean beginning and end of the substring. > that ^ and $ meaning bol and eol at the top level meant that they > required > special handling already, since sam really doesn't know much about > lines, unlike ed. if the whole file is just one long string, which is > exactly > how sam works, shouldn't ^ and $ then mean beginning of file and end > of file? that's not very useful. Isn't a line just a substring of a file. The extension of ^ and $ from line to sub-string is natural. Confusing it with files isn't. -- -- God exists because mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exist because we can't prove it. Andre Weil, in H. Eves, Mathematical Circles Adieu ravage@ssz.com jchoate@open-forge.com www.ssz.com www.open-forge.com