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Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 12:56:48 -0400 (EDT)
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From: David Bakhash <cadet@MIT.EDU>
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To: XEmacs BETA <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>
Subject: Re: [repost] regex patches: minimal matching, etc.
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Michael R Cook writes:
 >  Jeff> Should I expect any improvements or is this the type of
 >  Jeff> patch that just makes new features availble to coders?
 > 
 >  KMH>  It just makes new features available to coders.  They are outlined in
 >  KMH> the message containing the patch.  What do you think?
 > 
 > Keep in mind that the patch causes emacs to reject some regexes that
 > it would previously accept.  These are all "strange" regexes, such
 > as "a*+", which are generally just typos.

All this confuses me.  I am happy to see extended RE in emacs, but I
still don't understand some stuff.  Like will all this stuff work for
the `posix-' prefixed RE functions?  Minimal matching is cool, but
unless you are using the posix- based functions (which are slow, and I
hardly ever see them used) you can't be certain that *not* using minimal 
matching will get you the longest possible match.  Shouldn't X/emacs
just consolidate REs and make them all posix?  speed it up with RE
compilation, and just finish with it?  (I say this as if it's a snap.  I 
know it's not).

dave

