problem with '^' as first char in BRE for expr
Bob McGowan
rmcgowan@veritas.com
Wed Nov 8 09:20:00 GMT 2000
>From the expr man page:
: Perform pattern matching. Its arguments are
coerced to strings and the second one is considered
to be a regular expression, with a `^' implicitly <
added at the beginning. The first argument is then <
matched against this regular expression. If the
match succeeds and part of the string is enclosed
in `\(' and `\)', that part is the value of the :
expression; otherwise an integer whose value is the
number of characters matched is returned. If the
match fails, the : operator returns the null string
if `\(' and `\)' are used, otherwise 0. Only one
`\(' and `\)' pair can be used.
Helmut Dipper wrote:
>
> I use bash and fileutils from the latest distribution
> on Windows-NT 4.0 SP5.
>
> expr 'abc' : '^a\(.\)c$'
> delivers:
> expr: warning: unportable BRE: `^a\(.\)c$': using `^' as the first
> character
> of the basic regular expression is not portable; it is being ignored
>
> Question:
> I think the character '^' in a BRE is not irrelevant,
> why is it ignored?
>
> Regards
> Helmut Dipper
>
> --
> Helmut Dipper | SICAD Utilities GmbH
> phone: +49 89 636 41558 | Otto-Hahn-Ring 6
> ___fax: +49 89 636 49613 | D-81730 Muenchen
>
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--
Bob McGowan
Staff Software Quality Engineer
VERITAS Software
rmcgowan@veritas.com
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