Re: PCRE mode for sed

[Bob Proulx]

Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> Just a feature idea:
> 
> grep has nowadays -P which optionally allows to use PCRE as regexp
> langauge.
> 
> It would be awesome if sed has the same.

Let me provide a dissenting opinion.  IMNHO the addition of the -P
option to grep has caused no end of problems.  For example the pcre
library on my system and I am sure many others lives in the
/usr/lib tree.  But that isn't available during early boot time
before /usr has been assured of being mounted.  This caused various
gratuitous bootstrapping problems.  The same problems will be there
for sed.

The vote from me would be to not do it.  One of the very strong
advantages of sed is that it is standard.  There isn't enough
advantage in adding -P to offset the disadvantages.

Bob