Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!att!whuts!homxb!hropus!ki4pv!tanner From: tanner@ki4pv.uucp (Dr. T. Andrews) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: what should egrep '|root' /etc/passwd print? Message-ID: <7037@ki4pv.uucp> Date: 17 Sep 88 13:52:27 GMT References: <44414@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> <68203@sun.uucp> <8202@alice.UUCP> Organization: CompuData Inc., DeLand Lines: 11 X-summary: usque ad mortem bibendum & the cups shouldn't judge the beer In article <8202@alice.UUCP>, andrew@alice.UUCP (Andrew Hume) writes: ) i think that it is clear that grep '' file is always a syntax error; ) there is no useful interpretation of such a regular expression. I wasn't aware that the "grep" family was intended to decide for me what constituted a "useful" regular expression. I was under the impression that these programs were merely supposed to match on whatever expression I cared to provide. -- ...!bikini.cis.ufl.edu!ki4pv!tanner ...!bpa!cdin-1!cdis-1!ki4pv!tanner or... {allegra killer gatech!uflorida decvax!ucf-cs}!ki4pv!tanner