Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!rice!uw-beaver!milton!ogicse!intelhf!ichips!inews!iwarp.intel.com!gargoyle!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: vi and emacs
Message-ID: <1991Mar11.155110.5930@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 11 Mar 91 15:51:10 GMT
References: <1991Mar5.184647.28175@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <1991Mar06.150359.13516@chinet.chi.il.us> <1991Mar7.214419.17515@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 39

In article <1991Mar7.214419.17515@m.cs.uiuc.edu> joshi@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Anil Joshi) writes:

[backslash forces literal in regexp]
>That's a constant annoyance. Try to count the number of meta-chars you have to
>type verses what you have to type if you have two sets of commands.

But you do have two sets of commands:
set nomagic
operation
vs.
set magic
operation

This is what you were complaining about in the first place as I recall.
Use an appropriate mapping if you think there is an easier way to do it.

>Anyway, where are these reg.exprs. explained? Each utility has its own 
>conventions for reg.exprs. Why? Why not have a common explanation somewhere
>and all new programs stick to it? Define a minimal set plus extras. No such
>thing exists in UNIX world today. In my opinion, most of the ills of vi are 
>directly inherited from UNIX.

Now you've hit the real problem, and one that does not have any simple
solution.  Note the resemblance to the problems with human languages.
Where are the rules explained?  Why are there exceptions?  Unix utilities
have evolved into their current form without a single point of control
that can make decisions like that.  And if someone did try to force
regexps into a "lowest-common-denominator" model, the utilities affected
would just be avoided and people would use an add-on utility like perl
with useful extensions.
Note more carefully what you say about vi inheriting things from unix,
though, keeping in mind that the original set of users were unix
programmers and you will see that it actually made it more intuitive.
Also, the original users of unix had access to the source (and the authors)
of everything.  Unfortunately, this is still reflected in the lack of
documentation.

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us