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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!mcvax!enea!erix!toni
From: toni@erix.UUCP (Toni Roth)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: lex
Message-ID: <909@erix.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Jul-85 12:09:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: erix.909
Posted: Tue Jul 30 12:09:23 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 08:02:24 EDT
Organization: L M Ericsson, Stockholm, Sweden
Lines: 41

I've written a nroff/troff macro package for formatting standard
documents. Now I'm trying to use lex to make an "interface" to the
user, so he won't have to learn *roff. As an example: if he wants a new
line, he writes ":nl." in his document. This is to be translated to
".NL". The problem is that this ":nl." can appear anywhere in the text
Look at these examples:

1: 
text text text text:nl.text text text text

2: 
text text text text :nl.
text text text text 

3: 
text text text text 
:nl.text text text text 

4:
text text text text 
:nl.
text text text text 

I want them all to result in this:

text text text text 
.NL
text text text text 

I could of course write something like:

"\n:nl.\n"	printf("\n.NL\n");
"\n:nl."	printf("\n.NL\n");
":nl.\n"	printf("\n.NL\n");
":nl."		printf("\n.NL\n");

But as the action is the same, I believe there is one pattern that
covers all four of these (I don't want ":nl." more than once in the
pattern and I want the action part as easy as now). How do I write this
pattern? 
Thanks in advance!