Re: lynx-dev regex in whereis?

[David Combs]

> From address@hidden Sat Aug  8 15:52:12 1998
> Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 18:51:31 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Laura Eaves <address@hidden>
> 
> Just catching up on my email and noticed this thread...
> 
> I think that if regex functionality is added to search
> there should be 2 search commands -- let '/'
> act as before and add a command (':' or something) for advanced search.
> Either that or add a prompt to the whereis command (/) asking whether
> advanced search should be used.
> That way novice users won't be expected to understand regular expressions.
> Anyone disagree?

Well, don't call it "advanced search", call "allow regexes",
if in fact that is what is added as feature.

A "help" can explain what that means -- and point
those who are interested at Friedl's book (O'Reilly),
which covers all the MANY different styles of regexs --
emacs vs awk vs vi vs egrep (several of those) vs perl, ...

We also have to decide WHICH of these to follow -- hopefully,
we can merely use some regex library that can exist everywhere.
  :-)   (?)   :-(   (?)

Seems to me that as M$ takes over the world, lots of
unix people will be forced over there to M$, and will
take along lots of their unix-like tools (via gnu?),
and we might as well call things by their "proper" names.

The word "advanced" means nothing -- you have to go read
a bunch of help to find out what it means.

However, "regular expression" DOES mean something, and
even nails it down if it shows ONE example that 
shows whether you have to backshash parens, etc:

 want regex-searches? (allowing eg /foo(1|one)\<bar\>/ 
   or some such "eg")

David