On Nov 24, 2007 11:53 AM, James Youngman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I now notice that unfortunately the content of regexprops-generic.texi
> has significantly diverged from the (one time) original source, which
> is automatically generated by lib/regexprops.c in findutils.
This original contains some extra sections which are not useful in
regexprops-generic.texi, and some which are useful are in act missing.
So I've updated the findutils code (the patch is awaiting code
review) to include a makefile rule for generating
regexprops-generi.texi as well. Findutils doesn't use the file, so
it's not generated by default.
> This
> leaves me with a headache; which of the changes were intended to fix
> defects in the documentation (and thus need feeding 'upstream' back
> into findutils) and which changes are mainly editorial or intended to
> adapt the file for use in other projects?
Well, this turns out not to be so bad. The changes were in fact
mostly the presence/absence of the sections I refer to above. My
confusion was caused by the fact that the automatically-generated text
is quite self-similar and so the diff was slightly confusing. So
while there are also editorial changes, they appear to be failrly
minimal and also appear to have been made by me. I attach the
relevant patch.
> I find this tangle a bit frustrating since it's this kind of
> difficulty that gnulib exists to prevent. Does anybody have ideas
> about how we could improve the situation ? That is, how can we make
> fixing this a once-only effort?
Well, once I have applied the pending patch to findutils, I will
update findutils' "make check" to compare the regexprops-generic.texi
it generates with the one included in gnulib. That extra automation
will take the manual work out of keeping this up to date.
2007-11-27 James Youngman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
* doc/regexprops.texi: change "an close-group" to "a close-group"
and "illegal" to "not allowed".
--- src/gnulib-git/gnulib/doc/regexprops-generic.texi 2007-11-27 11:06:38.000000000 +0000
+++ compile/doc/regexprops-generic.texi 2007-11-27 22:42:14.000000000 +0000
@@ -192,7 +194,7 @@
@item At the end of a regular expression
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Before an close-group, signified by
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Before a close-group, signified by
@samp{\)}
@item Before the alternation operator @samp{\|}
@@ -283,7 +285,7 @@
@item At the end of a regular expression
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Before an close-group, signified by
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Before a close-group, signified by
@samp{\)}
@item Before the alternation operator @samp{\|}
@@ -441,7 +443,7 @@
@item At the end of a regular expression
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Before an close-group, signified by
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Before a close-group, signified by
@samp{\)}
@item Before a newline
@@ -499,7 +501,7 @@
The characters @samp{^} and @samp{$} always represent the beginning and end of a string respectively, except within square brackets. Within brackets, @samp{^} can be used to invert the membership of the character class being specified.
[EMAIL PROTECTED], @samp{+} and @samp{?} are special at any point in a regular expression except the following places, where they are illegal:
[EMAIL PROTECTED], @samp{+} and @samp{?} are special at any point in a regular expression except the following places, where they are not allowed:
@enumerate
@item At the beginning of a regular expression
@@ -626,7 +628,7 @@
The characters @samp{^} and @samp{$} always represent the beginning and end of a string respectively, except within square brackets. Within brackets, @samp{^} can be used to invert the membership of the character class being specified.
[EMAIL PROTECTED], @samp{+} and @samp{?} are special at any point in a regular expression except the following places, where they are illegal:
[EMAIL PROTECTED], @samp{+} and @samp{?} are special at any point in a regular expression except the following places, where they are not allowed:
@enumerate
@item At the beginning of a regular expression
@@ -696,7 +698,7 @@
@item At the end of a regular expression
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Before an close-group, signified by
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Before a close-group, signified by
@samp{\)}
@end enumerate
