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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!richl
From: richl@tektronix.UUCP (Rick Lindsley)
Newsgroups: net.bugs.4bsd
Subject: Re: Reg Expr bugs in vi? - (nf)
Message-ID: <1411@tektronix.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Sep-83 03:38:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: tektroni.1411
Posted: Wed Sep 28 03:38:58 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Sep-83 20:59:52 EDT
References: <2990@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 41

The examples you gave worked perfectly correctly. On the input
skd jflksd jfsdlk
llkwejrlkw hllejrljlkajioerumm
jlrkwejrkw2345kld';l./,l sdfl

you said that the following search patterns all seem to behave the same way.
/^[a-z]
/.*[a-z]
/[a-z].*

And well they should. Perhaps you are confusing shell syntax with regular
expression syntax. The combination ".*" will match anything of any length.
Thus the 1st example will find the first line that starts with the letters
a-z; the second and third will find the first lowercase letter after the
cursor.

Your second example,
/,.*[0-9]
instead of
/,*[0-9]

works like this: the first example will find the first line with a comma
and a number in it. Both
,0
and
,ldfjljlsajfldfjlfasjfj0
will be found by that pattern.

The second will find only a line with a number in it,
because '*' can match null too. It could conceivably find a line of the type
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,1
also, but it would also work on
1

Playing with regular expressions can be tricky. Perhaps before you yell
"bug" you should explain exactly what you were trying to do rather than
what you did.

Rick Lindsley
richl@tektronix
...!tektronix!richl