Re: dfa.h / dfa.c diff versus gawk attached

[Aharon Robbins]

> Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:57:29 -0300 (ADT)
> From: Tony Abou-Assaleh <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: dfa.h / dfa.c diff versus gawk attached
> To: Karl Berry <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden
>
> > Which sounds like an incredible headache,
> > grep being so strongly line-oriented.  So maybe grep is not the right
> > place to test newlines in patterns ...
>
> I disagree here. With a bit of effort we should be able to change \n to
> any single character.

But does grep really need this?  IMHO grep has bloated way out of proprotion.
Some serious thought should be given to shrinking it, and writing test harnesses
instead for what needs testing.

> Allowing patterns to be record terminators is a bit harder, but has been
> done elsewhere and could eventually be ported to grep as well (not any
> time soon though).

Gawk does this.  The code could likely be pulled out into something standalone,
but I see no need for grep to morph into gawk. :-)

My two cents, :-)

Arnold