Re: Easy regexp issue

[Kevin Rodgers <kevin.d.rodgers@gmail.com>]

Barry Margolin wrote:
> In article <mailman.3295.1169191738.2155.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>,
>  Kevin Rodgers <kevin.d.rodgers@gmail.com> wrote:
>> See the LITERAL argument in the doc string for replace-regexp-in-string:
>>
>> (replace-regexp-in-string "/" "\\" "c:/emacs/lisp/" nil t)
> 
> Or
> 
> (replace-regexp-in-string "/" "\\\\" "c:/emacs/lisp/")
> 
> This is necessary because backslash is an escape character at two 
> levels: Lisp strings and regexp replacement strings (e.g. the sequence 
> \1 in the replacement represents a group matched in the regexp).  So the 
> replacement string needs to be \\, and you need to escape each \ in the 
> string.

That was my point: If you don't need the backslash to be interpreted in
the replacement string as a submatch reference, specify a non-nil
LITERAL argument -- which should execute faster to boot.  Of course,
there's no way around the need to escape the backslash in the Lisp
string.

-- 
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA