[comp.unix.programmer] Getting a 'grep' on myself

afoiani@nmsu.edu (Anthony "Tkil" Foiani) (01/26/91)

I've a question for unix gurus.  I was creating a mail digest, and
was using 79 '=' signs as delimiters.  I then tried to use egrep to
knock it apart, with the command
  % egrep '^=\{79\}$' my-mail-digest
which failed pretty violently to find any separaters.  I eventually
got around to trying 
  % grep '^=\{79\}$' my-mail-digest
which worked as expected.

The real 'question' then, is why did egrep fail while grep works?

TiA,
Tony
--
Tony Foiani  a.k.a. Tkil  (afoiani@nmsu.edu) or (mcsajf@nmsuvm1.bitnet)
Supporting:  Unix / DOS / VMS / Macintosh / "What's this?"
   ObQuote: "Lucretia, my reflection, dance the ghost with me..."
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barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) (01/26/91)

In article <AFOIANI.91Jan25105849@dante.nmsu.edu> afoiani@nmsu.edu (Anthony "Tkil" Foiani) writes:
>The real 'question' then, is why did egrep fail while grep works?

According to my manual (SunOS 4.0.3):

     egrep accepts regular expressions  of  the  same  sort  grep
     does,  except  for  \(, \), \n, \<, \>, \{, and \}, ...
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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