Re: regexp with match over multiple lines

[PJ Weisberg]

On Thursday, May 5, 2011, AngusC <anguscomber@gmail.com> wrote:
> and I am using:
>  <\1\[CDATA.*^J*>
>
> But it doesn't make any replacement.  I used C-q C-j - ie typed those keys
> when entering.

That matches any number of characters that sren't newlines, followed
by any number of newlines, before the '>'.  The way to match any
character including newlines was in the first reply you got:
"\\(.\\|\n\\)"

On Thursday, May 5, 2011, AngusC <anguscomber@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Andreas Röhler wrote:
>> (setq startstring "abc")
>> (setq endstring "def")
>>
>> (defun my-start-end-delete ()
>>    " "
>>    (interactive "*")
>>    (let (beg)
>>      (while (search-forward startstring nil (quote move) 1)
>>        (setq beg (match-beginning 0))
>>        (when (search-forward endstring nil (quote move) 1)
>>          (delete-region beg (match-end 0))))))
>>
>> abcABCDEFdefAAAAAAAAAA -> AAAAAAAAAA
>>
>>
>
> I am thinking I probably need to learn lisp to have real power.  More regex
> would probably help.

Learning lisp isn't a bad thing, but the above code is really an
example of why you should learn regular expressions.  There's no
reason the above should have taken more than one line.


-- 

-PJ