Re: Summary: Comments made on 1st Run FAQL Format

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Steve Summit (scs@eskimo.com)
Fri, 26 Nov 1993 12:06:36 -0800

While I was venting my spleen after composing my previous message
in this recurring little thread, my Sweetie, who isn't even much
of a Unix nurd, reminded me that FAQ lists are *already* in a
standard format amenable to manipulation by sophisticated tools:
ASCII text files. The significance of this format cannot be
overstated.

You can search for keywords with the grep utility, or with the
search command within the more utility. With a bit of
imagination and regexp savvy, you can jump forward to
question/section boundaries with search commands, too.
grep and more have both inspired numerous more-featureful
successors (e.g. agrep, less) which presumably let you do even
more.

I've forgotten who first made it, but an eminently reasonable
suggestion, which we really ought to get around to implementing
one day, and which would, in the grand Unix tradition, address
90% of the need with 10% of the effort, would be to define a new
RFC822-style header listing an ed/grep-style regular expression
to be used for searching for question/section boundaries.

Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com

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