From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Emanuel Berg Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: How to grep for a string spanning multiple lines? Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2022 14:48:52 +0100 Message-ID: <87edtoh5iz.fsf@dataswamp.org> References: <8735a6cj2k.fsf@mbork.pl> <87y1rxix4e.fsf@dataswamp.org> <871qpodgzn.fsf@mbork.pl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="27541"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Cancel-Lock: sha1:m8qVWDxTUST7QWNR80Bfj1zPTQE= Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Sun Nov 27 18:52:50 2022 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1ozLph-0006yP-WD for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org; Sun, 27 Nov 2022 18:52:50 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1] helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1ozLpE-0007TT-Se; Sun, 27 Nov 2022 12:52:21 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1ozI1p-00082D-MC for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sun, 27 Nov 2022 08:49:05 -0500 Original-Received: from ciao.gmane.io ([116.202.254.214]) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1ozI1n-0007C4-Ur for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sun, 27 Nov 2022 08:49:05 -0500 Original-Received: from list by ciao.gmane.io with local (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1ozI1j-0009JM-Ic for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sun, 27 Nov 2022 14:48:59 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Mail-Followup-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Mail-Copies-To: never Received-SPF: pass client-ip=116.202.254.214; envelope-from=geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org; helo=ciao.gmane.io X-Spam_score_int: -15 X-Spam_score: -1.6 X-Spam_bar: - X-Spam_report: (-1.6 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS=0.25, SPF_HELO_NONE=0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no X-Spam_action: no action X-Mailman-Approved-At: Sun, 27 Nov 2022 12:52:19 -0500 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.help:141198 Archived-At: Marcin Borkowski wrote: >>> I remember that someone in some video said something, and >>> I want to find that part. However, it turns out that it is >>> split between two (or more) lines. >> >> (re-search-forward ";; Hello my friend\n;; stay a while, and listen") >> >> ;; Hello my friend >> ;; stay a while, and listen > > Well, that's obviously cheating. The real problem is how to > search when you have no idea where you have spaces and where > you have newlines... Okay, I didn't understand ... you want to search for something you or someone else said (wrote), but you only remember the words, not punctuation, whitespace etc? It can be done with regular expressions of course, but ... I wonder if it isn't better to have some "inexact" search algorithm which quantifies the proximity or score of each inexact hit in a set of results, so that - if I just make things up for a possible search for "Hello my friend" in a body of text where it doesn't quite exist - it could produce fallout such as results score ----------------------- Hello my Fräulein 89% Hello MySQL 28% Go to Helvetia 3% Because the advantage would then also be that even the words wouldn't have to be exact! Interesting, I'd like that myself very much! Do we have that? -- underground experts united https://dataswamp.org/~incal