From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <aa78fa42c63110097e9d4ba953331aea@google.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] sam command language
From: "rob pike, esq." <r@geekmail.cc>
In-Reply-To: <69239ed0eda4832cf8644e945d012b7e@vitanuova.com>
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Date: Tue,  7 Oct 2003 11:48:12 -0700
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>> and then, in the end, i felt the need for the modified version of ^
>> and $ so rarely that i don't really mind not having them.
>
> for me, it's been frequent enough to feel a little frustrated by it
> (particularly when dealing non-line-oriented files).
>
> i wouldn't modify the meaning of ^ and $, rooted as they are in
> antiquity.  one could always take a brave leap into the almost
> unsullied waters of Unicode...

the waters of special characters for regex hacking are muddy
enough already.   i've been in them before and i'm nice and
clean now.  no, thanks.

> BTW while on minor sam/acme gripes, is it a bug or a feature that if a
> file is written, changed, and the change undone, the file is not
> marked as changed?  this means that X/'/w is not guaranteed to write
> out all files that have been modified from their on-disk copies, and
> has bitten me more than once (i don't use that idiom any more!)

feature.  otherwise you couldn't undo to the point it was clean.

ever do this? (probably not)
	X/'/u
send that until nothing happens and you've backed up to the last
clean instance. you can even snarf and send a bunch of them:

	X/'/u
	X/'/u
	X/'/u
	X/'/u
	X/'/u
	X/'/u
	X/'/u
	...

weird, but it works.  (to do a particular file, put more detail in the
pattern.)

-rob