[Mailman-Users] Are the "regexps" used in Mailman really RegularExpressions?

[Mark Sapiro]

Jeff Groves wrote:

>Are the regexp used in Mailman similar to those used in awk?
>
>If so, why don't you have to escape characters like "." in an email address?
>
>Is there anywhere that has a "HowTo" on the regexps standard used in Mailman?

They are Python regular expressions. See
http://www.python.org/doc/2.2.3/lib/re-syntax.html

Strictly speaking, you do have to escape ".", but many people don't
because they think that the "." in "^[^@]*@example.com" probably
wouldn't match anything else.

Also, in several cases such as for example the *_these_nonmembers
lists, an entry can be either a literal address or a regexp. It is a
regexp only if it begins with "^", and in these cases the leading "^"
is both an anchor and means what follows is a regexp.

--
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan