SEARCH argument - opinion asked

[Willem Grooters]

I posted another one (limit search to part of line) in advocacy - as has been suggested in another thread). Will show up next monday (if I read all well).

Willem

[Antoniov.]

I embrace the Bojan idea.
Keep SEARCH simple, new qualifier for regoular expression.

Antonio Vigliotti

[Garry Fruth]

How about SEARCH/WILD and SEARCH/WILD=REGEXP?

[John Gillings]

re: Willem "I posted another one (limit search to part of line)"

See $ SEARCH/KEY=(pos:n,size:m)

(since V6.2)

My point about regular expressions is that GREP (and variants) already exist, with well known semantics and behaviour. They already work on OpenVMS. If SEARCH requires a qualifier to enable regular expressions then you're comparing:

$ grep parameters...

with:

$ SEARCH/GREP parameters...

So what's gained except a more complex SEARCH command? How will it interact with other qualifiers? Will all the standard Unix switches be implemented? How?

We have the luxury of being able to sequester any useful Unix commands. So, if you want GREP, then use GREP, rather than a reimplementation (which will inevitably have minor, but annoying differences). There's no need to re-invent that particular wheel.

[Jan van den Ende]

Thanks all

This whole stream will be presented to Guy Peleg, and I think we can trust him to take all remarks into account, and come up with something that will be the best possible synthesis of all these ideas.
I know he is in Europe till end of next week, so any brilliant additions can be posted until then.

Cheers.

Have one on me.

Jan

[Ian Miller.]

another point is that grep has to be added. SEARCH is already there.

[Cass Witkowski]

Although I like the Pipe command in OpenVMS I don't want the command set to deteriorate to Grep, Awk and Yacc. (Please no flames)

One thing I really like about DCL is that is was architected, and consistent. I hope that any new command or addon to Search is done to the same high standard.

[Uwe Zessin]

No flame intended, but the PIPE feature is just a framework to combine program input / output and has nothing to do with the interface of the individual program.

I don't think anybody asked that established programs morph into their Unix counterparts, but some features like regular expressions are really useful.