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In article <5060020@hpccc.HP.COM>, lufkin@hpccc.HP.COM (Paul Lufkin) writes:
> I'm having trouble manipulating strings containing the pipe ( "|" ) 
> with MKS regular expressions in vi/ex and sed.
> 
> In other implementations of UN*X ex, the command    1,$s/||/:/g
> would change all occurences of "||" to ":".
> 
> In MKS vi I get the error message 'Badly constructed regular expression'.
> Escaping the |'s does not help (ie. /\|\|/ ), nor does setting 'nomagic'.
> 
> Paul Lufkin, Jr., Hewlett-Packard Application Support Division
> lufkin@hpccc or [hpda|hpfcla]!hpwcso!paul, (415) 691-5780

I'll be dipped; you're right.  Searching for || works just fine.  Weirder
than that, after you've searched for ||, using that as the previous
regular expression, you *can* change it; that is, :s//:/g<ret> works
just fine.  Gee, I think I'll send these guys some E-mail.

-Paul S. R. Chisholm, {ihnp4,cbosgd,allegra,rutgers}!mtune!lznv!psc
AT&T Mail !psrchisholm, Internet psc@lznv.att.com
I'm not speaking for my employer, I'm just speaking my mind.