Re: special-display-regexps

[Tyler Smith <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca>]

On 2007-04-27, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:
>> I'm trying to set up special display frames. I want to use if for the
>> following buffers:
>>
>> *Completions*
>> *Help*
>> *help[R](functionname)*
>>
>> I've tried the following regexps:
>> (setq special-display-regexps
>>       '("^\\*Help\\*$"
>>       "^\\*Completions\\*$"
>>       "^\\*help\\[R\\]([a-z]*)\\*$"))
>>
>> This works fine for the first two, but the third doesn't catch. I've
>> also tried with single \ and double \, as well as simpler things like
>> "\*help.*" -- this works for regexp searches when I paste the buffer
>> name into scratch, but they don't work for the special display. What
>> am I doing wrong?
>
> "[*]Help[*]" etc. is simpler.
>
> You want the backslash to be in the string itself, so that the * is escaped.
> To put a single backslash into a string in Lisp, you need to use \\\\. See
> node "Regexp Special" in the Elisp manual.
>

This is really confusing now.

 "^\\*Completions\\*$" matches *Completions*, although I'm not sure
 why since it is actually the regexp ^*Completions*$, since the double
 \ should get filtered out by the string reader??

and "^[*]help.*" still doesn't match *help[R](help-topic)* , but the
same thing entered in a regexp search will match.

Any other advice?

Thanks,

Tyler