Re: Egrep Version 2.3

[Hans-Bernhard Broeker]

address@hidden <address@hidden> wrote:

> egrep -i -e -f test.txt test1.htm matches, but for test2.htm does not (line
> break before closing '>')

That's expected behaviour. "grep" and it's brethren don't consider any
match longer than a single line of input text.

The breakage in your particular example happens here:

>       ([^>]*>                 a close bracket (as long as it's not nested)

[^>] does not match a line break.

> I was trying to see if Regular expressions could do syntax parsing without
> becoming a mile long.

They can --- but grep can't, because of its operating in terms of
'lines'.

> For hairy parsing like this do you recommend YACC? Or does sed have
> extensions to handle it??

In sed, you'ld have to fiddle with the hold buffer to eliminate the line
breaks.

The tool you really should be looking at is neither yacc/bison, nor
sed, nor {e|f|}grep: it's (f)lex. In flex scanners, a [^>] does,
indeed, match a \n.
-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (address@hidden)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.