scanf style parsing

[Aahz Maruch]

In article <mailman.1001607930.24098.python-list at python.org>,
Skip Montanaro  <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>You'll generally never cook up complex regular rexpressions using
>incremental search because you have no convenient way to correct mistakes
>and retry, but you will use all the pieces and build up more complex stuff
>when you're programming Perl or Python.  Making the leap from Emacs's
>old-style re's to POSIX-style re's as Perl and Python use now is fairly
>straightforward.  Mostly it involves getting rid of backslashes and learning
>about {m,n}, \d, \s and other little shortcuts.  (I still almost never use
>\d.  My fingers just type [0-9] automatically.)
>
>maybe-the-best-argument-against-vi-ly, yr's

Actually, what I usually do with vi is open up another editor window to
write my regex and then cut'n'paste to the window where I'm doing real
work.  That way I *do* have a convenient way to correct mistakes in
complex regexes.  Here's a cutie:

:s/(\([0-9][0-9][0-9]\)) *\([0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)/\1-\2/
-- 
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