Re: need help with a defun

[Kevin Rodgers]

Barry Margolin wrote:

> In article <3F09E01F.10207@gmx.de>, Bernd Wolter  <mathae.wolter@gmx.de> wrote:
> > (defun clean ()
> >  "Doc string"
> >  (while (not (eobp))
> >    (re-search-forward ";\\s-*") ;;pattern of interest delimited by "; "
> >    (search-backward ";")
> >    (let* ((beg (point)))
> >      (while (looking-at "[; ]") ;;is there another pattern on the same 
> > line?
> >         (forward-char))
> >      (delete-region beg (point)))
> >    (if (looking-at "[\n]")  ;;are we looking at the end of a line
> >         (forward-char)       ;;goto the next line
> >      (insert-string "\n"))  ;;otherwise divide the line
> >    (clean)))
...
> Why are you calling it recursively at all?  You're in a while loop, which
> will repeat the code until it's done.
>
> What you're missing is that the while loop should also terminate when the
> re-search-forward fails, so it should be:
>
> (while (and (not (eobp))
>             (re-search-forward ";\\s-*"))

Wouldn't re-search-forward effectively terminate the loop as originally
written, by signalling an error?

--
Kevin Rodgers