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Re: Trouble with regexp


From: Joel J. Adamson
Subject: Re: Trouble with regexp
Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 13:27:09 -0400
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.60 (gnu/linux)

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> Hi, TLS!
>
> On Thu, 22 May 2008, TheLonelyStar wrote:
>
>
>> Hi,
>
>> I some trouble with regular expression. I thought, the regexp "\(foo\|bar\)"
>> should match either foo and bar.
>> But  if I have a buffer with "foo" in it, the regexp build does not match it
>> with that :(.
>
> Are you sure your regexp is what you think it is?  If you are typing
> it into an elisp program, you need to write:
>
>     "\\(foo\\|bar\\)"
>
> .  If you've done C-M-s and are typing into the minibuffer, you don't
> double the quotes.

I think the problem is he's using re-builder, and expecting it to work
the same as regexp Isearch.  If I enter this

"\\(some\\|with\\|regexp\\)"

in re-builder, then I get some matches.  Without the double backslashes
and quoting, it won't match.

But in Regexp Isearch

\(some\|with\|regexp\)

does match.  Confusing, yes, but useful nevertheless.

Joel
-- 
Joel J. Adamson
Biostatistician
Pediatric Psychopharmacology Research Unit
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA  02114
(617) 643-1432
(303) 880-3109
Public key: http://pgp.mit.edu
http://www.unc.edu/~adamsonj




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