Dale Scheetz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > The hyphon at the ned of hello in "hello-debhelper" isn't any of these, > > > but grep declares it to match anyway! Is this something to do with the > > > form of my expression? > > > > It's preceded by a character that isn't a letter, digit or underscore: > > a hyphen. > > > Which confused me as to why it was being included in the "word". > > So a "search string" is defined as any characters delimited by blank, tab, > or newline, but because the hyphon is not considered a "word constituent" > character, debhelper is considered a "whole word" within the string > "hello-debhelper"?
If I understand what you're saying, yes: word delimiters are not part of the words they separate. If that's not what you mean, then I guess I need a more elaborate explanation. (Sorry, I don't have enough time right now to help with your larger problem.) -- "Whoever you are -- SGI, SCO, HP, or even Microsoft -- most of the smart people on the planet work somewhere else." --Eric S. Raymond