awk vs. regular expressions starting with equal sign

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Article #146

#146

From: Henry Spencer
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 1984 22:45

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There is a fundamental lexical ambiguity in awk:  when you see "/=",
is this the divide-by-and-assign operator, or the start of a regular
expression which happens to begin with an equal sign?  Awk thinks it
is the operator, which means you can't start a regular expression with
an equal sign, ever.  To really write such a pattern, you have to resort
to schemes like "/.=/" or "/.*=/".  How annoying.  I can see no real fix.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry

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Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.bugs.v7,net.unix-wizards
Subject: awk vs. regular expressions starting with equal sign
Message-ID: <4770@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Dec-84 17:45:25 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.4770
Posted: Tue Dec 11 17:45:25 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Dec-84 17:45:25 EST
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
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