http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/sam/ http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/sam/ look for the section on structural expressions. I am n

http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/sam/ http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/sam/ look for the section on structural expressions. I am not really an expert but my understanding is that they are called that because you can use them to define the structure of a match. in most regular expression engines the structure is defined as a line of text or the whole document and the expression only matches the contents. This is why they do so well with multi line records you just need to define a structure expression that matches your, well.. structure. I never did learn sam all that well, I mainly used it as a non interactive sed replacement. however I just learned that apparently the vis project uses structural expressions. I might try it. Mainly because at least then my fingers sort of know what to do.