Very Computer

I've a question for unix gurus.  I was creating a mail digest, and
was using 79 '=' signs as delimiters.  I then tried to use egrep to
knock it apart, with the command
  % egrep '^=\{79\}$' my-mail-digest
which failed pretty *ly to find any separaters.  I eventually
got around to trying
  % grep '^=\{79\}$' my-mail-digest
which worked as expected.

The real 'question' then, is why did egrep fail while grep works?

TiA,
Tony
--

Supporting:  Unix / DOS / VMS / Macintosh / "What's this?"
   ObQuote: "Lucretia, my reflection, dance the ghost with me..."
                                                      - Sisters Of Mercy

Quote:>The real 'question' then, is why did egrep fail while grep works?

     egrep accepts regular expressions  of  the  same  sort  grep
     does,  except  for  \(, \), \n, \<, \>, \{, and \}, ...
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar