Re: Finding C style comments using isearch-forward-regexp

[Kevin Dziulko <dziulko@klaatu.canisius.edu>]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Kai Großjohann wrote:

> "Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>" <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu> writes:
> 
> >> - any sequence of [^*] is allowed
> >> - a * followed by [^/] is allowed
> >> The above two can be repeated.
> >> I think that avoids backtracking.
> >
> > It will avoid matching past the comment-end, but it doesn't prevent the
> > regexp routines from pushing stuff on the stack in case we need
> > to backtrack (the routines are not clever enough).
> 
> Hm.  Does that mean that even, say, .* on a file with a single very
> long line will put too much stuff on the stack?
> 
> Is there a way to tell the routines to never backtrack?  I think
> there is a way for Perl, and Perlish things went into the Emacs
> regexp engine...
> 


The regexp /*[^\(*/\)]*/ will find C comments in a non-greedy fashion.
Does this help your stack problems?