Re: emacs regexp question

[D. Goel <deego@gnufans.org>]

untested answers below, i hope they are not all wrong :-)


> Hello:
> 
> There are some regexps I don't know how to specify in gnu emacs:
> 
> - How should I ask for the first occurrence of two blank lines?

"\n\n" or C-q C-j C-q C-j if invoking M-x re-search-forward
interactively. -- that command is boundto C-M-s in some modes.


> 
> - How should I ask for the first occurrence of N blank lines for some fixed,
> yet large, N. 

"\n\n\n\n..."  I don't think there's another way to do it using emacs'
regexps.  perhaps regexp is not the right approach if N is very large,
and some simple elisp is in order.


> I think emacs uses ^ for the start of the line, though I've seen
> some regexp libraries (not for emacs) that use the ^ as a sort of
> "exponentiation" symbol for the number of times a string is
> concatenated.



> 
> - How can I search for regexps that have one or more newlines in the middle?

something like ".*\n.*"



DG                                 http://gnufans.net/
--