[Gnu-arch-users] Re: Preventing matches in regular expressions

[Stefan Monnier]

>> But man, oh man, that's an ugly regex, and it'll only get less readable 
>> with longer filenames and multiple filenames.
>> 
>> Does anyone know a better general solution?

> Well, you can implement regexp extensions that construct these
> things. They can get a bit memory-hungry though.

I'd rather change the way Arch works: process the directives in the order
in which they appear in the file.  So you could just say

   unrecognized ^fox\.zip$
   backup \.zip$

or even things like

   unrecognized data\.tar\.gz$
   backup \.tar\.gz$
   unrecognized \.gz$

That would also make it easier for a human to read and understand
a .arch-inventory file since she wouldn't need to remember the
detailed ordering in which rules are applied.


        Stefan