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Date:      Sat, 9 Feb 2002 14:17:44 -0500
From:      parv <parv_@yahoo.com>
To:        f-q <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   less ungetcc overflow when passing a long pattern
Message-ID:  <20020209191743.GA39154@moo.holy.cow>

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when the following regex is passed to less, i get the "ungetcc 
overflow" error message; after which less quits.


# regex (121-characters long minus the "'" ) wrapped for email
# change ^I to actual tab (character)
#
less  --pattern='experience|\
^[ ^I]+[[:alpha:] \/]+\:|\
[[:alnum:]\\.\\-\\+]+@[[:alnum:]\\.\\-]+\\.[[:alpha:]]+|\
http\:\/\/[[:alnum:]\/\\.\\-]+'   filename


if regex shortened, say, "experience|" is removed, everything goes
just fine.  is there limit on the length of pattern passed?  less(1)
doesn't seem to say much on the issue.

same thing happens when less is used a mutt pager w/ above regex
(thus having no pager at all, until changed).

btw, above regex works, w/o passing it on command line, inside the
less, specified via search("/") command.

so, my inquiry is: is it not possible to mention this limit in
less(1)?

this may apply to all the options that less takes; --pattern option
is most likely to be easily long enough to cause error though, in my
not-so-extensive and non-c-programming experience.

  - parv

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