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From: Gary Wessle <phddas@yahoo.com>
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Subject: replace regex takes long
Date: 16 Apr 2006 07:29:08 +1000
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Hi

I have a file with data in the form
date<spac>name<space>age<space>higth<newline>
the <space> are 5 to 20 spaces, so I want to replace them with just
one <space> between fields. so I did
M-x query-replace-regex <RET> +<RET><ONE SPACE>
the file size is 4162111 with 77000 lines on PentiumIII 500, it has 
been 10 minutes so I opened another emacs processor to write and post this.
is there a problem with my command and why it is taking that long? and
for how much longer?

thanks