On Fri, 8 Jan 2016 10:25:05 -0600, Paul Gilmartin wrote: >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regcmp(), which is described as "withdrawn and are not supported as 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.
In this case, the parser considers this: 'isn't the equivalent of this: t'isn' and stops there, and anything after that is expected to be something like NEXT, PREV, FIRST, LAST, or ALL. If there was some character other than t, c, p, r, or x after the quote, it would work. If there was some character other than a space after the 't it would work. Not defending it, just explaining what's going on. Bill ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
