awk programming question

[dteske at FreeBSD.org]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Warren Block [mailto:wblock at wonkity.com]
> Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2014 12:57 PM
> To: 'Devin Teske'
> Cc: 'RW'; freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: RE: awk programming question
> 
> On Thu, 23 Jan 2014, dteske at FreeBSD.org wrote:
> 
> >> From: RW [mailto:rwmaillists at googlemail.com]
> >> Note that awk supports +, but not newfangled things like *.
> >
> > With respect to regex, what awk really needs is the quantifier syntax...
> >
> > * = {0,} = zero or more
> > + = {1,} = one or more
> > {x,y} = any quantity from x inclusively up to y {x,} = any quantity
> > from x or more
> 
> I think RW meant to type that awk did not have the newfangled "?" for non-
> greedy matches.

But that one is supported. Tested on 9.2-R and 10.0-R...

echo abbb | awk '{sub(/a?bbb/, ""); print}' # produces NULL output
echo bbb | awk '{sub(/a?bbb/, ""); print}' # similarly produces NULL output

Seems to be supported. But I'd really like to see {x,y} (the ? is equivalent
to {0,1}).
-- 
Devin

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