Documentation Bug Concerning Regular Expressions?

[Hults, Josh]

Hello Bash Maintainers,

In the currently posted version of the Bash documentation, there is a section 
regarding Conditional Constructs (3.2.4.2, 
https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/bash/manual/bash.html#Conditional-Constructs).
  Within that section is a portion discussing the [[ ... ]] operator, and 
within that portion is a discussion of the "=~" regex operator.

The example given of a regex pattern is:  [[ $line =~ [[:space:]]*?(a)b ]].  
(This example is referenced twice)

I believe in the question mark in the regular expression is in the wrong place, 
based on the .  I believe it should be after the parenthesized "a".  Putting it 
before the parentheses is more akin to the syntax used for extended file 
globbing with the extglob option, such as !(...), @(...), etc.  In true regular 
expressions, like after =~, the repetition operator always goes after the sub 
expression.

Thank you for your time and effort into the shell itself, and the corresponding 
manual.  They've both been instrumental in my job as a systems administrator.  
If you'd like to discuss my suggestion further, or any portion of the manual, 
don't hesitate to reach out.

Josh Hults
Systems Administrator
jhults@serigraph.com<mailto:jhults@serigraph.com>
262.335.7675


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