[comp.emacs] GNU Emacs regexp wish list addition

nate@cpocd2.UUCP (Nate Hess) (04/27/87)

About the only thing that I would like to see added (everything else
seems to be there -- I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong :-)#
is a way to specify the exact number, or a min/max, or a range of
occurrences of an RE.  This is done in Un*x utilities with '{n}',
'{n,}', '{,m}', or '{n,m}', respectively, following the RE.

Is this something we might be likely to see in Version 19?

--Nate
-- 
	"How do you get your mind to tilt like your hat?"

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savage@ssc-vax.UUCP (Lowell Savage) (05/20/87)

How about a way of running a function or a shell command (with arguments) to
produce a regexp to be matched.  For instance:
"^\.so \(\(\%ls | conv_sp_bar\%\)\)" would run a shell with whatever is inside
the matching "\%"'s.  So it would run "ls" and pipe the output through
"conv_sp_bar" to convert the whitespace to "\)\|\(" strings.  Thus, with a
directory containing the files "foo", "bar", and "fubar", the regular
expression would contain: "^\.so \(\(foo\)\|\(bar\)\|\(fubar\)\)".  A similar
thing is for lisp functions is desired too, even though I can't think of an
application right off-hand.

Lowell Savage
uw-beaver!ssc-vax!savage

Standard disclaimer here--these are my thoughts, ideas and suggestions only...