Re: [opensuse] regexp -- defference between \< and \b ?

On Tuesday 29 April 2008 17:58, David C. Rankin wrote:
Listmates:

With regular expressions, what is the difference between \< and \b ?
The man page says:

Which man page? There are many, many programs and libraries that
implement regular-expression matching, and REs are by no means singly
defined. There are many grammars for notating them and many varieties
of fundamental matching constructs.


"The symbols \< and \> respectively match the empty string at the
beginning and end of a word. The symbol \b matches the empty string
at the edge of a word..."

What is the difference between being at the "beginning or end" of a
word or at the "edge" of a word? Presuming that "The (word) symbol \w
is a synonym for [[:alnum:]]"

Well, beginnings happen only at the beginning. Ends happen only at the
end. Boundaries are either. (Am I going too fast for you??)


The concept eludes me.....

I wasn't aware of any RE system that implements both the "directional"
word boundaries (\< and \>) and the neutral one (\b).

Personally, I prefer the old-style \< and \> but apparently they're a
thing of the past.


--
David C. Rankin


Randall Schulz
Nobody
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