Re: Patterns: Why are anchors not character classes?

[Jonathan Goble <jcgoble3@...>]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 6:17 PM, Soni L. <fakedme@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16/07/15 05:44 PM, Jonathan Goble wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 4:36 PM, Rena <hyperhacker@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Jul 16, 2015 6:04 AM, "John Hind" <john.hind@zen.co.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>> New character classes are unlikely to break existing code.
>>>
>>> Except code that builds patterns from user input and escapes it like
>>> gsub(s,
>>> "%W", "%%1").
>>
>> Solution: forget %^ and %$ completely and use %b (beginning) and %e
>> (end) instead. Neither of those letters are currently in use for
>> character classes, so nothing would break, and the letters would be
>> easy to remember.
>
> %b is already in use, actually, but for %b() or %b[] or %b`'
>
> See "Pattern Item": http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/manual.html#6.4.1

Oops, I forgot about that because I never use it, and I didn't scroll
down to the "pattern item" section. Duh.

So just use something else (though I don't know what to suggest). The
main point is to use letters instead of punctuation to avoid breaking
existing code.