Re: Fancy split - simple regexp problem

[Tim Landscheidt]

Štěpán Němec <stepnem@gmail.com> wrote:

>>>> Nothing, I think :-). I personally don't use fancy split-
>>>> ting, but a deeper look at (at least Gnus 5.13's) code seems
>>>> to locate the culprit in Emacs' *backward* regular expres-
>>>> sion "non-greedity": Position point at the end of
>>>> "bugzilla.gdm", C-u C-r "\w+" - et voilà, only one character
>>>> is matched.

>>> That's not "non-greedity", that's brokenness IMO. Reported as GNU Emacs
>>> bug #9681.

>> As your opinion doesn't seem to be shared by the Emacs de-
>> velopers, I'd suggest filing a bug for Gnus (as well :-)).

> Be my guest. (I'm not interested in the Gnus problem in particular, as I
> don't use splitting.)

I do, but not the fancy variant.

> Also, I don't think "doesn't seem to be shared" is a fair description.
> I think most of them acknowledge the problem, but don't consider it
> important enough to invest the (apparently rather big) amount of effort
> necessary to fix it.

> The brokenness is hardly deniable.

Don't get me wrong, fundamentally I'm with you on that it
constitutes what in MySQL would be called a "gotcha" - some-
thing totally unexpected, yet somewhere documented.

  But I disagree with you to consider this a *bug*, as it
*is* documented and it is logistically impossible to change
Emacs' behaviour in this regard without assessing whether
this breaks potentially quazillions lines of code. And I
don't think that the developers consider it a bug either.

Tim