RE: [PATCH] vi: POSIX backslashes in expand_args
Morgan via busybox <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.linux.busybox |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
On Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:05 David Laight <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:54:11 +1000 > Morgan via busybox <[email protected]> wrote: > > > vi: POSIX backslashes in expand_args > > POSIX won't say anything about the way vi should handle \ escapes. > The best you can do is look at how other re-implementations of vi > behave. It does under ex. (which the vi command-line reference refers to) [1] > Backslash quoting in ex is non-intuitive. <backslash>-escapes are ignored > unless they escape a special character; for example, when performing file > argument expansion, the string "\\%" is equivalent to '\%', not "\<current > pathname>". This can be confusing for users because <backslash> is usually > one of the characters that causes shell expansion to be performed, and > therefore shell quoting rules must be taken into consideration. Generally, > quoting characters are only considered if they escape a special character, > and a quoting character must be provided for each layer of parsing for which > the character is special. As another example, only a single <backslash> is > necessary for the '\l' sequence in substitute replacement patterns, because > the character 'l' is not special to any parsing layer above it. [1]: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/ex.html#tag_20_40 _18_08 > David > > [...] -Morgan