Pádraig, Thank you for your response Unfortunately, even the command pattern you are proposing as an alternative: [[:space:]]\{1,\}CDS[[:space:]]\{1,\} does not work, therefore I have to conclude that csplit is neither BRE and ERE compatible Thanks for your help R On Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 12:23 PM Pádraig Brady wrote: > On 12/11/2021 17:05, Rodolfo Aramayo wrote: > Dear Coreutils Maintainers, > > > First, thank you for your work. I use coreutils daily both for my > research > and teaching. It is a great set of tools. > > Second, I recently > needed ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerStart > This Message Is From an External Sender > This message came from outside your organization. > ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerEnd > > On 12/11/2021 17:05, Rodolfo Aramayo wrote: > > Dear Coreutils Maintainers, > > > > First, thank you for your work. I use coreutils daily both for my research > > and teaching. It is a great set of tools. > > > > Second, I recently needed to extract Coding Sequences information from a > > GenBank file. GenBank files are used in Computational > > Genomics/Bioinformatics extensively. I used csplit, and it works like a > > charm. > > > > The command I used is: > > > > csplit -sz -n 5 --prefix=02_ 01_00001 > > /[[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]]CDS[[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]][[:space:]]/ > > {*}; > > > > I was unable to declare: "[[:space:]]\+" as I expected for POSIX aware code. > > > > My question is: Is csplit POSIX compatible? and if it is not, can we make > > it POSIX compatible? > > > Well POSIX defines BRE and ERE, with csplit supporting the former. > From the code we have: > > re_syntax_options = > RE_SYNTAX_POSIX_BASIC & ~RE_CONTEXT_INVALID_DUP & ~RE_NO_EMPTY_RANGES; > > Generally one can replace '+' functionality from ERE, with '\{1,\}' in BRE. > So you'd be using something like: > > [[:space:]]\{1,\}CDS[[:space:]]\{1,\} > > We might add an option to use ERE, though there isn't a big need > for that I think for csplit use cases. > > cheers, > Pádraig > > -- Dr. Rodolfo Aramayo, PhD Faculty of Biology and Genetics Department of Biology, Texas A&M University PeerJ PeerJ - the Journal of Life & Environmental Sciences Academic Editor peerj.com/RodolfoAramayo