Re: suggested patches for regex routines from gawk

[Aharon Robbins <arnold at skeeve dot com>]

Hi Roland.

> As to paperwork, contributions to libc need an FSF assignment just like
> you've done many of for other things, so you know the drill.

OK.

> For both libc and gnulib, when posting changes you need to include both
> GNU-style ChangeLog fragments, and an explanation of each change that is
> not completely obvious.  Collections of changes like what I see in your
> patch should usually be split up into numerous separate changes where only
> one kind of change (even if a pervasive one) will be in each commit.

I suppose this is not unreasonable.

> As to the specifics of regex, I think the starting place is that we'd like
> to get regex (along with everything else) re-harmonized with gnulib first
> and then have particular changes packages want hashed out jointly between
> libc, gnulib, and package maintainers like you.

The last time I looked at the gnulib regex, I saw a lot of stuff that
I felt was not really necessary (unconventional typedefs instead of int,
and who knows what else).  There was so much extra change that I found
it next to impossible to see the substantial differences between my
code and gnulib's, so I gave up.  Nor am I particularly motivated to
try again.

I will be happy to work with Paul offline, but I think the ball is in
his court. :-)

In the meantime, I will wait until glibc and gnulib harmonize their
regex code.

Thanks,

Arnold