wk@hpirs.HP.COM (Wayne Krone) (01/18/89)
The command nl(1) numbers the lines of the input text. You can limit the lines numbered to those matching the regular expression "pattern" by using the option "-bppattern" (among others). While doing some other work on nl(1), I noticed when it processes a text line it passes the text plus the trailing newline to the regular expression routine. This means the line: abc must be matched by the RE "abc\n$" instead of "abc$". Other commands strip off the newline before performing the regular expression match. It's quite easy to make nl(1) work similar to the other commands, but I was unsure whether I should fix this as a defect or document it as a feature. Any opinions? Thanks, Wayne Krone