RE: line-spanning regexp

[Greg Hill]

At 12:00 PM -0600 1/15/03, Bingham, Jay wrote:
<snip>
> Earlier versions of Emacs require a different construct, the regexp to
> use in those versions is:
>
> "string1\\(\\|[^\n]\\)*[\n]?\\(\\|[^\n]\\)*string2"
>
> See http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?NonGreedyRegexp for more
> information.

Jay,

Thanks for pointing that out.  I didn't know about this hack for 
non-greedy searches in pre-21 emacs.

Unfortunately the web page you cited doesn't really explain it, just 
calls it a "hack" and provides a single minimalist example.  I'm sure 
I could remember it better and use it more effectively if I 
understood why it works, but that is not apparent to me.  Are you 
aware of a more in-depth discussion of this topic that I could 
consult?

Thanks.

--Greg