From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: regex.c: emacs & glibc (and xemacs, and grep and ...) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 12:05:36 -0700 (MST) Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: <200204051905.g35J5a618932@aztec.santafe.edu> References: Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1018033590 13553 127.0.0.1 (5 Apr 2002 19:06:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 19:06:30 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 16tZ2c-0003WU-00 for ; Fri, 05 Apr 2002 21:06:30 +0200 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 16tZFk-0006mg-00 for ; Fri, 05 Apr 2002 21:20:04 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16tZ2G-0007wT-00; Fri, 05 Apr 2002 14:06:08 -0500 Original-Received: from pele.santafe.edu ([192.12.12.119]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16tZ1l-0007pT-00; Fri, 05 Apr 2002 14:05:37 -0500 Original-Received: from aztec.santafe.edu (aztec [192.12.12.49]) by pele.santafe.edu (8.11.6+Sun/8.9.3) with ESMTP id g35J5aa19120; Fri, 5 Apr 2002 12:05:36 -0700 (MST) Original-Received: (from rms@localhost) by aztec.santafe.edu (8.10.2+Sun/8.9.3) id g35J5a618932; Fri, 5 Apr 2002 12:05:36 -0700 (MST) X-Authentication-Warning: aztec.santafe.edu: rms set sender to rms@aztec using -f Original-To: sds@gnu.org In-Reply-To: (message from Sam Steingold on 04 Apr 2002 13:55:05 -0500) Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.8 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:2396 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:2396 Emacs comes with it's own version of regex.c, even though most UNIX systems have a regex implementation. IIUC, this is for portability. Also because we had to have one for GNU. Suppose glibc's regex and Emacs' regex are unified - will Emacs still build it's own regex version even on gnu systems (linux, hurd)? Yes, because it has special conditionalized features specifically for Emacs which were not compiled in when using it for Glibc. Unless we were to provide interfaces for those things in Glibc, the system-supplied regex will never be usable. Finally, GNU CLISP (http://clisp.cons.org) comes with a GNU regex.c of 1994(!) - which version should we upgrade to? Emacs? GLIBC? GNU grep? I wish I knew. The versions diverged due to inattention, and recently a completely new regex was put into Glibc. I am told it has major problems. Supposing they are fixed, you will probably want to use that one in CLISP.