Re: GNU sed maintainers, please document GNU sed's "-E" option (which is now in POSIX)

[John Cowan]

Bruce Korb scripsit:

> If you put several fewer gallons of water into a tub,
> then you have less water in the tub.  "fewer" is for
> stuff you can count, "less" for stuff you don't count.
> "backslashes" and "gallons" are countable.

OT, but this is not the whole truth but an oversimplification.  Quantities
and amounts such as time, distance, and money take "less", and have for
a thousand years, but less than (not "fewer than") two thousand years.
Thus "10 items or less" in the checkout line is correct, because it's the
total amount that's relevant, not the individual items.  In addition,
the number 1 is a special case; "one fewer backslash" is unidiomatic,
and has to be "one less backslash" or "one backslash fewer".

-- 
That you can cover for the plentiful            John Cowan
and often gaping errors, misconstruals,         http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
and disinformation in your posts                address@hidden
through sheer volume -- that is another misconception.  --Mike to Peter