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Could someone tell me why my off-topic flag was declined on this question?

Bash script programming: how to match pattern in string?

At best it's a generic programming / scripting question that - in my opinion - has nothing to do with Ubuntu and is unlikely to help any future visitors. Also, someone was declined from removing the tag, when it's unclear to me how or why this question is related to perl.

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    The tag reject was explained. It's rooted in Perl (grep -P will do that).
    – Oli Mod
    Jul 29, 2014 at 21:30
  • Learned something, thanks. Can I also see declined edits, or is that a moderator privilege?
    – kraxor
    Jul 29, 2014 at 21:33
  • You can view your suggested edits in your profile askubuntu.com/users/285419/… so you can see the rejected ones and their reasons.
    – Dan
    Jul 29, 2014 at 21:35

1 Answer 1

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He is using Ubuntu, On Topic, plus it is about using the command line, or at worst making a bash script to do the job - note we do accept programing questions on Ubuntu, It just sometimes makes more sense for them to be on another site, if there are abstract. But grep and sed are tools Ubuntu users here will be familiar with, and we should have more than enough people to be interested in and answer a question like this.

As for the tag edit - if someone only made a edit to remove one tag it was probably declined as too minor

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  • Quote from the flagging popup: "[...] and generic programming questions [belong] on Stack Overflow." -- Do we really accept programming questions? You could re-phrase this question as "how to write a perl-style regex that does this specific job". It's unclear that OP is using Ubuntu and even if he does, it's the only thing that connects his question to Ubuntu. He could have said he's using Mint or even Windows with Cygwin, the question would remain the same. In those cases, my flag would have been accepted I suppose. Was it rejected on the assumption that OP uses Ubuntu? He never said so.
    – kraxor
    Jul 29, 2014 at 21:44
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    Are you suggesting we ban questions about command line tools in general? It is not like this is about how to start a multi platform program using C+. It is a simple question about a tool commonly used in Ubuntu - and based on upvotes and answers it will be useful to other ubuntu users
    – Mateo
    Jul 29, 2014 at 21:49
  • Of course not! I just have this strong sentiment that this particular question should belong to some other SE site. But I might be too pedantic here. Maybe there are just too many numbers and asterisks in the question.
    – kraxor
    Jul 29, 2014 at 21:57
  • @kraxor Scripting questions are generally considered on-topic, whether in bash, dash, python, perl, etc. and there are still some people who don't mind (some) programming questions. Do you really consider simple scripting "too programming like"? Anyway, it is on-topic.
    – Seth
    Jul 30, 2014 at 0:38

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