From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: ken Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: RE for any text, including white space Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 06:20:11 -0400 Message-ID: <4D81E05B.80207@mousecar.com> References: <4D80B9BE.2070105@mousecar.com> <4D813140.6090402@mousecar.com> Reply-To: gebser@mousecar.com NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1300357281 31070 80.91.229.12 (17 Mar 2011 10:21:21 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 10:21:21 +0000 (UTC) Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org To: Kevin Rodgers Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Mar 17 11:21:16 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Q0AKR-0004gF-Qa for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 17 Mar 2011 11:21:16 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:50490 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Q0AKR-00087A-1q for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 17 Mar 2011 06:21:15 -0400 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=37512 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Q0AJa-00082U-BK for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 17 Mar 2011 06:20:27 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Q0AJX-0005d4-W3 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 17 Mar 2011 06:20:21 -0400 Original-Received: from mout.perfora.net ([74.208.4.195]:62849) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Q0AJX-0005ct-NX for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Thu, 17 Mar 2011 06:20:19 -0400 Original-Received: from dellap.mousecar.net (dsl093-011-016.cle1.dsl.speakeasy.net [66.93.11.16]) by mrelay.perfora.net (node=mrus4) with ESMTP (Nemesis) id 0Lb5f7-1PbWwW24Az-00kTxB; Thu, 17 Mar 2011 06:20:16 -0400 User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 (X11/20101213) In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 0.96.0 OpenPGP: id=5AD091E7 X-Provags-ID: V02:K0:ciQfQgZg1A8t64+20uZPT3owanVl/EbzfdR4095QRA0 prP6X5+3AI1xHn2QS6u4f6K8gOYXVlgH3jbZgDXzH9MO1lQ9B/ jwySyEEs23ReOtO9Zeqr7vBZiom8hSvGVKwKzL/UXyGUzbrxcI HMjS0kc9+oidyv5fvEy5PpjWHHz+BtivhdZi7brvyAheE+gHy8 yTI0KAIMAghGG1UOmzAVnBBZe7ZTjzccMXJBgMgiZY= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 74.208.4.195 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:80204 Archived-At: On 03/17/2011 12:50 AM Kevin Rodgers wrote: > On 3/16/11 3:53 PM, ken wrote: > ... >> If what you gave me works to find just the "f" before "> something like "

\\(\\[.\n\t ]*\\) > . is not special within [], which is why PJ expressed the tag content as > \\(.\\|\n\\)*? > > And \t and SPC do not have to be handled specially with respect to ., > only \n. > I thought I read that on the web somewhere but I wasn't sure that I did, and I don't always have 100% faith in what the web says. So for the sake of expediency, I thought it better to be redundant, get something that works, then test for possible redundancies. So thanks for the confirmation... it saves me from having to test those. On the first point: How elisp is to parse the period seems to have been dreamt in Black Forest lore rather than in the hard, white light of rationality. That's to say: If it's a special character, why not let it be so both within \\(.\\) and \\[.\\]?? This would seem the more consistent, yes? Consistency would also seem to dictate that in either context, prepending a backslash would serve to substitute the literal for its special meaning, as it does for so many other special characters. Yes, of course it's much too late to write the rules. ACK that. I suppose I'm just venting a particular frustration that seems to have me reverse-engineering frequent parts of this strange language in order to write in it. Thanks, Kevin, for unveiling that. It's one less unpuzzling for me to do.