Subject: Re: bug#5970: regex won't do lazy matching

From: Bob Proulx <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2010 14:34:10 -0600

tags 5970 + feedback
thanks

a g wrote:
> This may be a usage problem, but it does not exist with other regex packages
> (such as slre) and I can't find anything in the documentation to indicate
> that the syntax should be different for coreutils. I am using coreutils 8.4
> on ubuntu AMD64, version 9.10. I cannot get the coreutils regex matcher to
> do lazy matching. Here is my code:

I read this and was somewhat confused by it.  Could you clarify and
educate me as to your use?  Coreutils is not a "regex package" in the
same way as pcre or slre.  It does use regular expressions such as in
'expr'.  So of course I wondered if you were using a command like
'expr' or were trying to extend coreutils with an additional command.

Also, since the bug-coreutils mailing list is attached to a bug
tracking system every message thread of discussion opens an issue
ticket in the bug tracker.  I believe this issue has been resolved
satisfactorily by the subsequence responses.  Do you agree?

Thanks,
Bob