On Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:20:33 +1000 Lex Trotman elextr@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps, as you say, it should offer a substitute command that works line by line as well, but "someone has to do it" (tm) and "patches are welcome" (tm) (that right Frank ;-).
Thats a better answer than your previous one :-).
Oh, there is rarely any objection to contributions, that goes without saying.
I was noting that the current behavior is not a bug (since it behaves as specified) so it doesn't have to be fixed. nor is a change in behavior necessary (since there is a workaround to the rare "problem") so it doesn't have to be fixed. With limited resources there are far more important things to think about.
Personally I think we shouldn't rematch a replaced start of line. I think this is counter intuitive. Is there a reason why the current behaviour is better?
Anyway, the reason it works as it does was because that was easier to implement.
I personally don't care if someone changes it (although I think that going back to line by line operation is a step back into the time when whole files would not fit in memory, ah hey lets bring back Teco ;-).
Not sure anyone's proposing preventing matching past a line.
Regards, Nick