test/sam: add sam testing infrastructure

Compare structural regular expression implementation
with the one of sam(1).

1 files changed, 41 insertions, 0 deletions

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+Tests for vis - structural regular expression support
+-----------------------------------------------------
+
+We test the structural regular expression implementation by supplying
+the same command to both vis and [sam](http://sam.cat-v.org/). More
+concretely we use `ssam(1)` the non-graphical streaming interface to
+sam. These tests are intended to be run on a system with
+[9base](http://tools.suckless.org/9base) or
+[plan9port](https://swtch.com/plan9port/) installed.
+
+However, be aware that vis does deliberately not implement all commands
+available in sam. Moreover, some language constructs have slightly
+different semantics. Of particular relevance is the different grouping
+implementation. In sam each command of a group is executed with
+the same initial file state and all changes are later applied in parallel
+(if no conflict occurred). Whereas vis applies the changes immediately
+and subsequent commands will operate on the modified file content.
+As a consequence the following snippet to swap two words does currently
+not work in vis:
+
+    ,x/[a-zA-Z]+/{
+      g/Emacs/ v/....../ c/vi/
+      g/vi/ v/.../ c/Emacs/
+    }
+
+This is particularly relevant for the tests because they are all
+executed in an implicit group.
+
+A test constitutes of 3 files, the first 2 of which are mandatory:
+
+ * `test.in` the file/buffer content with which the editor is started
+ * `test.cmd` a file containing the structural regular expression
+    command as you would type it in vis at the `:`-prompt or pass to
+    `ssam(1)`.
+ * `test.ref` if omitted, the output from sam will be considered as
+    reference. 
+
+The top level shell script `test.sh` looks for these files in sub
+directories, executes both editors and compares the resulting output.
+
+Type `make` to run all tests.