Am 24.11.2006 um 22:14 schrieb Dieter Wilhelm:

Just for completeness: where to look for the answer? In AWK, Perl, an

Elisp function on the Emacs wiki?

Into this list – or its archive(s)! This kind of question was answered more than once. This year, last year, ... It might be time to put it into an FAQ or a Wiki. Hints are given in the Elisp info doc on Regexp (where the full description can be found):

`.' (Period)

    is a special character that matches any single character

    except a newline.

`[^ ... ]'

    A complemented character alternative can match a newline,

    unless newline is mentioned as one of the characters not

    to match.  This is in contrast to the handling of regexps

    in programs such as `grep'.

So "{[^}]*}" stands for 'a region that starts with `{´ and has no `}´ until the final `}´ is hit; between both braces any number (starting with 0) of any character except `}´ can appear.'