Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!think!ames!killer!tness7!tness1!nuchat!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: VI - Bug or feature?????
Keywords: regular expression, search, help
Message-ID: <1149@ficc.UUCP>
Date: 25 Jul 88 15:47:51 GMT
References: <1244@potpourri.UUCP > <394@piring.cwi.nl>
Organization: SCADA
Lines: 16

In article <394@piring.cwi.nl>, hansm@cwi.nl (Hans Mulder) writes:
> I agree with you that this behaviour is incorrect.  But I am afraid it is
> not easy to repair.  The cause of the problem seems to be that vi is based
> on a line editor (ex, a derivative of ed).  Ex has this routine that finds
> all non-overlapping matches on the current line, which is very handy for the
> :s/pat/repl/g command, but not quite what vi should have borrowed.

I disagree. This behaviour is correct. I have used an editor on the PC
that does what you suggest -- terminate closures with the shortest match --
and it's very irritating. You can't emulate long closures with a short
closure regular expression, but you can do the opposite -- emulate short
closures with a long closure RE. It's almost always better to use the
more general method.
-- 
Peter da Silva  `-_-'  Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
"Have you hugged  U  your wolf today?" (uunet,tness1)!sugar!ficc!peter.