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  • See lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2021-02/msg00054.html if you need a reference to globasciiranges behaving weirdly. Commented Nov 28, 2022 at 20:25
  • @StéphaneChazelas, yes, I think that's exactly what I was thinking. I didn't remember where it was, though, thanks. Commented Nov 28, 2022 at 20:30
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    @johnsmith, hmm. So what's the question exactly? You wrote "I've had no end of issues trying to use/understand this manual, what's wrong with it?" -- so if you're looking for what's wrong with the manual, I guess it could be that it's just written in a style that doesn't work well with you. The way I read it doesn't tell to use just [:lower:], but to use [:lower:] within [ ], ending up with [[:lower:]]. Commented Nov 28, 2022 at 20:39
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    @johnsmith, oh, indeed, there's e.g this: "Alphanumeric characters: [:alpha:] and [:digit:]; in the ‘C’ locale and ASCII character encoding, this is the same as [0-9A-Za-z]." -- and you're quite right, that's wrong. [0-9A-Za-z] is the same as [[:alnum:]], not [:alnum:]. Now, I can understand them listing the classes with only one set of brackets, as you can indeed put more than one class inside one set of brackets (e.g. [[:alpha:][:digit:]] is fine). But those examples are wrong. Sorry, I didn't even see that the first time... Commented Nov 28, 2022 at 21:01
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    Ah, that actually also makes sense. That's why they didn't put [[:digit:]] or whatever. I didn't know you could nest them into one big one like you did with alpha and digit. Ok that, explains me a lot!! Thank you! Commented Nov 28, 2022 at 21:12