awk vs. regular expressions starting with equal sign

[bobr at zeus.UUCP]

> > Try /\=/.  It worked for me.
> 
> About six people have told me this, or variants of this.  I *thought*
> it was clear from my original posting that I *know* how to work around
> the problem.  My point was the absence of a *fix*, not the absence of a
> workaround kludge.
> -- 
> 				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
> 				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry

    1.  It was not clear from your orginal posting that you knew that there
    	was a work-around, or I would not have responded in a manner such as
	above.  I did think it strange coming from you, because your previous
	postings have given me an impression of competence and
	thoughtfulness.

    2.  Your quest for a fix implies that there is a problem.  That I'm not
    	so sure about.  Both C expression syntax and regular expression
	syntax are consistent in isolation from each other, and the conflict
	arises only in their concerted application.  The ambiguity is a 
	syntactic one that would require an irregularity in either regular
	expressions or arithmetic expressions to resolve it.  Better that
	they should remain pure, and the conflicts of their mutual
	application be documented rather than coming up with yet another
	mechanism, one more exception that must be remembered.
-- 
Robert Reed, Logic Design Systems Division, tektronix!teklds!bobr