Subject: Re: bug#5970: regex won't do lazy matching
From: Bob Proulx <[email-masked]>
To: a g <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:30:26 -0600
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

a g wrote:
> thanks for everyone's help. I agree this can be closed, but not for the
> reasons mentioned (though I appreciate them and they gave me the info I
> needed to find the answer:
> osdir.com/ml/lib.gnulib.bugs/2005-04/msg00027.html). Off to try emacs'
> regex.c instead.

Okay.  I will close the bug.

> It would be nice if coreutils could offer the emacs regex.c (or some other
> regex that supported non-greedy matching) at least as an additional library
> if not the standard one... but, not my call...

Though you did not answer my question as to your use of the regex
engine in coreutils I assume by this that you are trying to use it as
some type of general purpose library.  That really isn't its intended
purpose.  In coreutils it is there to support the regular expression
matching done in 'expr'.  For a general purpose library items it would
be better if you were to use gnulib or pcre or one of the other
libraries that is intended to be used as a library.

Bob