"Tony Lewis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Mauro Tortonesi wrote: 
>
>> no. i was talking about regexps. they are more expressive
>> and powerful than simple globs. i don't see what's the
>> point in supporting both.
>
> The problem is that users who are expecting globs will try things like
> --filter=-file:*.pdf

The --filter command will be documented from the start to support
regexps.  Since most Unix utilities work with regexps and very few
with globs (excepting the shell), this should not be a problem.

> It is pretty easy to programmatically convert a glob into a regular
> expression.

But it's harder to document and explain, and it requires more options
and logic.  Supporting two different syntaxes (the old one for
backward compatibility) is bad enough: supporting three is at least
one too many.

> One possibility is to make glob the default input and allow regular
> expressions. For example, the following could be equivalent:
>
> --filter:-domain:www-*.yoyodyne.com
> --filter:-domain,r:www-.*\.yoyodyne\.com

But that misses the point, which is that we *want* to make the more
expressive language, already used elsewhere on Unix, the default.

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