Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!mintaka!spdcc!ima!dirtydog!karl
From: karl@ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: MEL - A *Real* Programmer
Keywords: Real Programmer, Hacker
Message-ID: <1990Nov06.223757.29539@dirtydog.ima.isc.com>
Date: 6 Nov 90 22:37:57 GMT
References: <1990Oct23.235720.16178@nas.nasa.gov> <6089@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu> <54296@brunix.UUCP> <5777@suned1.Nswses.Navy.MIL> <8187@gollum.twg.com> <1283@gvgspd.GVG.TEK.COM> <10293@ubc-cs.UUCP> <1990Nov5.082657.28368@tkou02.enet.dec.com>
Sender: news@dirtydog.ima.isc.com (NEWS ADMIN)
Reply-To: karl@ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Interactive Systems
Lines: 20

In article <1990Nov5.082657.28368@tkou02.enet.dec.com> diamond@tkou02.enet.dec.com (diamond@tkovoa) writes:
>In article <10293@ubc-cs.UUCP> buckland@cheddar.ucs.ubc.ca (Tony Buckland) writes:
>>No sweat, if you have an editor that can find the pattern
>>"non-alphabetic, followed by 'i', followed by non-alphabetic".
>
>[What about line-boundaries?]  I've used a dozen editors that had search
>patterns including "beginning" and/or "end" of line, but none that accepted
>an "or" operation on line-break "or" character class, in a single search
>pattern.

This is within the pattern space accepted by egrep.  GNU Emacs can do it
interactively.  I believe the jim and sam editors use egrep-style patterns,
too.

With the help of a short program from my personal toolbox, I can do it without
using any regular expressions at all.  If I add in a slightly larger program
(116 lines), I can exclude false hits from comments and string literals (`\n'
and `%s' being the usual culprits).

Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl@ima.isc.com or uunet!ima!karl), The Walking Lint