GNU bug report logs - #28857
Wrong examples in documentation?

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Andreas Öhrén <andreas.ohren <at> gmail.com>
To: bug-sed <at> gnu.org
Subject: Wrong examples in documentation?
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 01:47:53 +0200

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Hello,

I don't have any experience using sed, but it looks to me as though the
documentation doesn't always use the regular expression extension that is
described, in its corresponding example. Here's an excerpt where \B and \S
aren't being used in their examples:

'\b'
     Matches a word boundary; that is it matches if the character to the
     left is a "word" character and the character to the right is a
     "non-word" character, or vice-versa.

          $ echo "abc %-= def." | sed 's/\b/X/g'
          XabcX %-= XdefX.

'\B'
     Matches everywhere but on a word boundary; that is it matches if
     the character to the left and the character to the right are either
     both "word" characters or both "non-word" characters.

          $ echo "abc %-= def." | sed 's/\w/X/g'
          aXbXc X%X-X=X dXeXf.X

'\s'
     Matches whitespace characters (spaces and tabs).  Newlines embedded
     in the pattern/hold spaces will also match:

          $ echo "abc %-= def." | sed 's/\s/X/g'
          abcX%-=Xdef.

'\S'
     Matches non-whitespace characters.

          $ echo "abc %-= def." | sed 's/\w/X/g'
          XXX XXX XXXX

'\<'
     Matches the beginning of a word.

          $ echo "abc %-= def." | sed 's/\</X/g'
          Xabc %-= Xdef.



Version:
sed (GNU sed) 4.4

The documentation states "This file documents version 4.4 of GNU 'sed'".


- Andreas

[Message part 2 (text/html, inline)]

Message #8 received at 28857 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Assaf Gordon <assafgordon <at> gmail.com>
To: Andreas Öhrén <andreas.ohren <at> gmail.com>,
 28857 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#28857: Wrong examples in documentation?
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 16:57:10 -0600

Hello,

On 2017-10-15 05:47 PM, Andreas Öhrén wrote:
> it looks to me as though the
> documentation doesn't always use the regular expression extension that is
> described, in its corresponding example. Here's an excerpt where \B and \S
> aren't being used in their examples:

Thank you for the report.

This was already fixed in the git source-code repository (after version 
4.4 was released), but the web site was not updated to reflect the 
latest changes.

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/sed.git/commit/?id=755e9434

Since there are few more pending documentation changes,
I'll wait for them and then update the website.

I'll keep this bug report open until then.

regards,
 - assaf

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