Re: bug in elisp... or in elisper???

[Kevin Rodgers]

On 3/23/11 8:18 AM, ken wrote:
...
> You might have noticed I use "\\([\s-\\|\n]+?\\)" to non-greedily match
> one or more whitespace characters.  Can one "\\[...\\] be nested inside
> another...?  e.g., "[[\s-\\|\n]+?]" or some syntax like that?

No.

It is not clear whether you mean "\s" (space) followed by "-" (which is
special within "[]"), or you actually meant "\\s-" (i.e. any character
with whitespace syntax).  The problem with "\\s-" is that it depends on
the buffer's syntax table, as does "[[:space:]]" -- see section 34.3.1.2
(Character Classes) in the Emacs Lisp manual for an explanation of
"[[:space:]]" and other POSIX-inspired character classes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression#POSIX_character_classes

If you are going to add "\n" to "\\s-" or "[:space:]", within "[]" or
"\\(\\|\\)", because you can't be sure whether the buffer's syntax table
assigns whitespace syntax to newline, then how can you be sure that it
assigns whitespace syntax to space, tab, formfeed, return, and vertical
tab?

So you may as well be explicit about what you mean by whitespace e.g.
"[ \f\t\n\r\v]"

> The "specialness" of "." seems to be lost when inside brackets; that is,
> in "[.\n]*?" it seems to represent a regular period (.) rather than "any
> character except newline".  Is there some way to bring back that
> specialness?  Or is there some other RE to represent "multiple instances
> of any character, including a newline"?

No, inside "[]", "." is not special.

The right way is: "\\(.\\|\n\\)*"

There may be other ways, but they will be longer and unnecessarily complex.

> Is it actually true (what the docs say) that there's a limit of nine
> sub-expression match-strings per RE?  Or can I do, e.g., "(match-string
> 12)" and "(match-string 15)"?  What is the actual limit?  Whatever it
> is, is this hard-coded into elisp... or can it be changed/configured to
> something else?

No, but you can only refer to the first 9 sub-expressions (actually, the
text matched by each of the first 9 preceding sub-expressions).

--
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA