Werner, On Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 08:05:59AM +0100, Werner LEMBERG wrote: > This is interesting, since it looks like a problem with sed. You are > using BSD sed, right? Please show us what the following expression > yields: > > makeinfo --version | sed 's/^.* \([^ ]\+\)$/\1/;1q'
The problem is in the sed expression. This is a GNU sed or even vim regular expression, but not a POSIX sed regular expression. You can read about BSD sed (which is a superset of POSIX sed) here: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=sed That will tell you that sed uses basic regular expressions (not extended like egrep). It will also point you in Sed Regular Expression section to re_format(7) manual page http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=re_format That page has in the section Basic Regular Expressions, first bullet, o `|', `+', and `?' are ordinary characters and there is no equiva- lent for their functionality. Thus your expression should have been (only \+ has been replaced with \{1,\} below): 's/^.* \([^ ]\{1,\}\)$/\1/;1q' In fact, I'd rather use sed -e 's/^.* \([^ ]\{1,\}\)$/\1/' -e '1q' it's more readable. > > with GNU sed, I get `4.8'. Then I have > > echo 4.8 | sed 's/^\([0-9]*\).*$/\1/' This one is fine. > > ==> 4 > > echo 4.8 | sed 's/^[^.]\+\(.*\)$/\1/' This one needs to be changed into sed 's/^[^.]\{1,\}\(.*\)$/\1/' > > ==> .8 > > echo .8 | sed 's/\.\([0-9]*\).*$/\1/' This one is fine. > > ==> 8 > > The various sed expressions are there to handle various possible > version info strings like `4', `4.8', or `4.8.1'. > > Before applying your patch I want to know the reason for the failure, > probably reporting it to both the BSD sed and autoconf people. Maybe > my original regexps are non-POSIX... As somebody already mentioned there is no sed maintainer for BSD. It's a part of a whole OS, that is maintained as a single CVS tree. I suggest not to report it though. I'm quite certain you'd get a reply that it won't be changed from what POSIX suggests. Changing the expressions as I suggested above is the easiest path to take. I hope this was helpful. Best regards, Zvezdan Petkovic _______________________________________________ Groff mailing list Groff@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/groff
