At 20:27 +0100 9/6/2001, Philip Hazel wrote:
>(1) Do nothing. Require people to escape \ and $ in their regular
>expressions. This would pretty much be every regex in a configuration.
>
>(2) Implement some new expansion syntax so that parts of a string could
>be marked "don't expand". It could be something like this:
>
> hold_domains = \N^\d+.*\.com$\N : other items ...
(1) and (2)...where (2) is
RE_HOLDDOMAINS = ^\d+.*\.com$
hold_domains = RE_HOLDDOMAINS : other times ...
Where the RE_ prefix (or a signal of your choice) on the macro name
says...use special regular expression expansion, in which expanding using
$foo has to be written as ${foo} and \ and $ do not need to be escaped (I
can't think of a way to use ${1,3} in an RE (to mean "between 1 and 3 ends
of stuff" since stuff only has one end.)
Unfortunately, the expansion code then has to remember "this part of the
string came from a RE_ macro, so expand it specially".
I don't think this will do as is...it may trigger a good idea, which I why
I post it.
--John
--
John Baxter jwblist@??? Port Ludlow, WA, USA