Let's say you want to give the variable 'foo' the value of 'moo shoo= coo'. I'd assume it would be written 'foo=moo shoo\= coo'.

I would think that would be foo=moo\ shoo=coo in a Unixish shell and "foo=moo shoo=coo" using an MSish one. In either case /(.*?)=(.*)/ does the job just fine since it will unconditionally use the first equals sign as the delimiter of the variable name, and then just slurp the rest of the string as the value, equals signs or not.

An inadquacy does therefor arise when one wants an equals sign in the variable name, but I don't know if allowing for that special case is even desired, and even if so whether it's worth going through the tremendous pain of handling escapes properly (a problem if I've repeatedly broken my teeth on - it's not possible without a true, if simple, parser).

Makeshifts last the longest.

In reply to Re: Doesn't seem complete by Aristotle
in thread Regular expression double grouping negation headache by JayBonci

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