Re: Is this a bug in grep, or is it me...

[Ben Pfaff <pfaffben@msu.edu>]

Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net> 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