Re: newline doesn't have whitespace syntax?

[Kevin Rodgers]

David Hansen wrote:
> On Fri, 12 May 2006 10:22:37 -0400 John Conrad wrote:
>
> > When I read this in the elisp manual:
> >
> > "Space, tab, newline and formfeed are classified as whitespace in
> > almost all major modes."
> > (35.2.1 Table of Syntax Classes)
> >  
> > I assumed that this re-search-forward expression would match the line
> > following it, but no dice.
> >
> > (re-search-forward "abcd[[:space:]]")
> > abcd
> >
> > I've tried several different modes, including fundamental mode. Am I
> > missing something?
>
> Sounds like an Emacs bug to me "\\s " is working (in
> fundamental-mode).  Anyway newline isn't whitespace in
> "most" modes.  In quite a lot of languages a newline ends a
> comment.

Right!  But in Fundamental and Text modes, newline should have
whitespace syntax (unless there is a syntax-table text property
on it that specifies some other class).

> To make your regexp reliable i would use something
> like "abcd\\(\\s \\|$\\)" (note that this will match "abcd"
> at the end of the buffer too w/o a final newline).

"abcd\\>" or "abcd\\b" might be closer to what John wants,
although the trailing whitespace (if any) would not be included
in the match.

> BTW:  M-: (syntax-after (point)) RET may be useful.

C-u C-x =

--
Kevin