Re: [OT] Re: OT: Gawk match() and numbers in scientific notation

Janis wrote:
> 
> Thanks. I understand the technical reason why the results
> are created the way we see them; but I think the implicit(!)
> and well hidden semantics of an expression like /[A-Z]/ are
> not very useful, to say the least.
> 
> I suppose it's also disputable whether character classes like
> [[:alpha:]] shall match non-English letters in a en_GB locale
> or e.g. accent diacritical characters in a de_DE locale. What
> is the intended rationale with locales in such cases; shall
> they cover multilingual data? Shall [[:lower:]] in a de_DE
> locale match a (French) á but not a (Greek) small omega (if
> the latter is not in the codepage)?
> 

 From a semantics point of view, it is also surprising that, when using 
de_DE.UTF-8 locale, e.g. <LATIN_SMALL_LETTER_A_WITH_ACUTE>  is included 
in the range [A-C], but <LATIN_SMALL_LETTER_C_WITH_ACUTE> is not, as it 
sorts after uppercase C.

In summary: using character ranges in combination with a non-POSIX 
locale is a good recipe for surprising results. To a somewhat lesser 
degree, this is also true for character classes.

Hermann