Re: trouble with pattern, character collections

Hi Marc!

On So, 17 Feb 2013, Marc Weber wrote:

> > This is allowed so that in a text
> > which is shown by vim as "A^@A" or "A^MA" the '.' also matches those
> > control chars carrige return / line feed.
> This doesn't make sense. If I ask to not match \n I don't want \n to be
> matched. Its about following the principle of least surprise.

It depends. Within a text file those control chars can occur and you
usually want them to be matched by '.' (or [^\n] which is the same).

> The burden to learn vim specific regex is already high enough for most
> users.

I don't see a burden here. In fact I like the vim specific regex, as I
see it as an enhanced version of BRE (but if you don't like it, use the
\v modifier).

> Also try to make me understand why "[^\n]" is supposed to do what it
> says, but '[^\n]' is not. In which way is either one related to .?

Because "\n" evals certain special backslash escaped chars within the
string (:h expr-string) and by definition '.' is the same as [^\n] at
least since one of the latest patches.

>
> > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/vim_dev/DzJ7ZzYlzQI/discussion
> In any case it should be documented.
>
> Also let me know if you think that I missunderstood the docs which I
> referenced.
>
> So this is either an implementation or a documentation bug.
> I'd like to this to be treated as a implementation bug.
>
> Vim should also follow the principle of "least suprprise" - and [^\n] is
> supposed to not match \n.

I don't want to change the RE engine so that certain control chars are
not matched anymore by '.' or [^\n]. This is at least backwards
incompatible (which I wouldn't have a problem with) and unexpected
(which I do have a problem with). But in the end, Bram decides.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Christian
--
Deutschland ohne Ausländer ist wie ein Klavier ohne schwarze Tasten.

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