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Tagged with history-of regular-expression
3 questions
4
votes
1
answer
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Traditional Vi and its regular expressions
I'd just want to get confirmation on (and maybe some background to) the way that Bill Joy's vi, sometimes found as traditional-vi on some BSD systems, handles regular expressions.
It seems as if most ...
18
votes
4
answers
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What is the rationale for \r and \n meaning different things in s command?
We all know that, when searching, \n is newline and \r is carriage return (^M), but when replacing \r is newline while \n is a null byte (^@).
What is the origin of this asymmetry? Given that this ...
4
votes
2
answers
1k
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Why are ^ and $ still magic in nomagic mode?
In 'nomagic' mode, ^ and $ have a special meaning and no others do. Why were these selected, rather than making people type \^ and \$ just as they do for \. and \*?
EDIT: I have been able to confirm ...