Cobra Interactive Query Language escapes

NAME

escapes — when and how to use an escape character

SYNTAX

	\

DESCRIPTION

Several terms and symbols in the Cobra query language have a special meaning, depending on where they appear in a command or query. This special meaning can be suppressed by preceding the term or symbol with a single backward slash escape character: \. Below we'll discuss typical uses, depending on context.
  • In mark expressions.
      Use an escape character to pass through the next character uninterpreted. An example can be when a space character is part of a file name. We can match the file name in an expression by escaping the space, e.g.: m & (.fnm == cobra\ file.c)

  • For qualifiers following a mark, contains, or stretch command.
      Use an escape character to suppress the interpretation of an argument as a qualifier, e.g.: mark \no to mark the literal text no (and similar for other qualifiers ir, top, and &).

  • To match on a literal semi-colon, avoiding that it is interpreted as a command separator, e.g.: m \;.

  • To match on a literal sharp symbol, avoiding its interpretation as a comment delimiter in cobra queries (not in cobra programs), e.g.: m \#define.

  • To match a space or tab character anywhere in the argument list of a query or command, precede the character with the escape character.

  • To match a string that starts with a forward slash character, to avoid that it is interpreted as a regular expression, e.g.: m \/foo. Similarly to match a regular expression that contains a space, e.g.: m /foo\ bar.

  • To match a string that starts with a @ or $ symbol, to avoid its interpretation as a meta character, e.g.: \@ident, or \$$.

  • To match tokens that contain the literal text \\: m /\\\\. Note that each of the backslashes needs to be escaped here, given a total of four backslashes to match two in the source text.

  • In inline programs (i.e., in between the delimiters %{ and %}).
    • in strings: \n and \t are replaced with the corresponding ascii codes so that print statements have the desired effect: print "\n";. To prevent the match, use an additional escape: print "\\n";.
    • elswhere in a cobra program \ characters are stripped and the next character is preserved as a literal character, no matter what it is.

SEE ALSO

qualifiers

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(Last Updated: 8 May 2017)