Re: RE for any text, including white space

[PJ Weisberg]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 2:53 PM, ken <gebser@mousecar.com> wrote:
> On 03/16/2011 03:40 PM PJ Weisberg wrote:
>> On 3/16/11, ken <gebser@mousecar.com> wrote:
>>> What's the RE for any text, white space included?  I also want to grab
>>> (for match-string...) this text.  The text is bounded by known
>>> characters.  E.g.,
>>>
>>> <h3>Any Text-- <a name="thisname">
>>> Hot Stuff</h3
>>> In the above, how to grab the text of the title, i.e., everything
>>> between <h3> and </h3>?  Conceivably this title text might contain
>>> *anything* except "</[Hh]{1-9]".
>>>
>>
>> If A and B are your start and end points, then you want:
>>
>> "A\\(.\\|\n\\)*?B"
>
> That's almost it, but not quite.  It grabs only the on last character
> before the "B"; in my example above it grabs just "f".  I'm needing to grab:
>
> "Any Text-- <a name="thisname">
> Hot Stuff"
>
> -- without the quotes, of course.

Well, it *matches* the whole thing; it's just that the parentheses
only grab the last character.  Put in another set of parentheses
around the part you want to capture, and you're golden.

"<h3>\\(\\(.\\|\n\\)*?\\)</h3"

-PJ