On Thu, 7 Jan 2016 18:07:11 -0700, Alan Young  wrote:
>
>The spaces also need the escape backslash like this
>
>FIND r'foo\ \'\ bar\ \"\ wombat'
>
This is bizarre.  I've coded a fair amount of regular expressions and
I've never needed to escape a blank in a regular expression.  In fact,
Single UNIX says:

    The interpretation of an ordinary character preceded by a
    <backslash> ( '\\' ) is undefined,

The z/OS XL C/C++ Runtime Library Reference in the description of
regcmp(), which is described as "withdrawn and are not supported as
part of Single UNIX Specification ..." states:

    Note: An non-special character preceded by \ is a one-character
    RE which matches the non-special character.

The description of the newer regcomp() makes no such statement.

Is backslash escaping elaborated by ISPF EDIT or by regcomp()?

I have an RCF in requesting a clarification of ISPF's syntax of
delimited strings.  My case in point is that with the subject:

    My aunt's pen isn't on the table.

The command:

    FIND 'aunt's pen'

matches successfully, but the very similar:

    FIND 'isn't on'

fails with a syntax error.  I can find no explanation of the
difference in current ISPF manuals.  I suspect a historical
explanation.

And, in the "CHANGE string1 string2" command, how can I specify
a string2 containing an arbitrary mixture of quotation marks,
apostrophes, and spaces?

Thanks,
gil

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