Hi Bob,
I agree the man page example doesn't seem to match the page's
definition, but I think the example and the explanation that follows is
wrong.
$ sed 4q ~/mail/aliases
x1: x2
x2: x2(_at_)example(_dot_)com
x3: x3(_at_)example(_dot_)com
x4: x3
$
$ ali | grep '^x[1-4]:'
x1: x2(_at_)example(_dot_)com
x2: x2(_at_)example(_dot_)com
x3: x3(_at_)example(_dot_)com
x4: x3
$
x1 is a forward reference and gets fully expanded.
x4 is a backward reference and does not.
I'm confused by mh-alias(5) saying
In match, a trailing “*” on an alias will match just about anything
appropriate.
What `match'? mh-format(5)'s function match()? No, it seems to mean
the match that's done to find the alias definition.
And then the example you quoted ends
news.*: news
but that isn't explained in the following text. A brief experiment:
$ sed 2q ~/mail/aliases
news: oldnews
news.*: news
$ ali news
oldnews
$ ali news.
news
$ ali news.foo
news
$
--
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy
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