number range parsing in sh(1)

[Larry Wall]

In article <469 at solaris.UUCP> wyle at solaris.UUCP (Mitchell Wyle) writes:
: Is there a better way to parse numeric ranges than the following?

[sh script to do ranges omitted]

: Is there a faster way?  How does Larry Wall's mailpatch work?
: 
: Curious minds want to know!

The mailpatch script calls a C program to do the ranges.  The patch sender
built into the dist package is written in perl, which groks numbers a bit
better than sh does.  One of these days I'll rewrite mailpatch in perl and
delete the C program.

Larry Wall
lwall at jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov