Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl Subject: Re: unpack and endianness Message-ID: <9898@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> Date: 10 Oct 90 16:27:28 GMT References: <9821@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <885@usage.csd.unsw.oz.au> <9847@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) Distribution: comp Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Lines: 36 In article mdb@ESD.3Com.COM (Mark D. Baushke) writes: : On 9 Oct 90 17:20:43 GMT, dale@convex.com (Dale Lancaster) said: : : Dale> In <9847@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV : Dale> (Larry Wall) writes: : : >Because . doesn't match \n. [\0-\377] is the most efficient way to match : >everything currently. Maybe \e should match everything. : : >And \E would of course match nothing. :-) : : >Larry : : Dale> I would rather see \* match everything and \e be ESC as it is in : Dale> other utilities. And maybe \!* matches nothing? :-) : : Dale> dml : : Please do not create any non-alphanumeric metacharacters. It would : break the quoting of a pattern that might contain metacharacters using : $pattern =~ s/(\W)/\\$1/g; 'Sides, there's millions of scripts out there that already use \* to mean a literal *. And \e doesn't mean ESC to me, it means \. What utilities does it mean ESC in? /etc/termcap uses \E, which is close. I HAVE considered making \a mean \007 (since K&R2 has it), but there's gotta be a limit somewhere. [Strange, that never stopped you before.] Oh, shaddap! Larry