Re: re-search beginning of line or whitespace

[Tim Johnson]

* Neon Absentius <absent@sdf.lonestar.org> [051101 18:30]:
> On Tue, Nov 01, 2005 at 05:39:46PM -0900, thus spake Tim Johnson:
> > (re-search-backward "^\|[\t ]") ;; gives me an error
> > 
> > What am I leaving out.
> 
> A slash ;)
 
  Thanks Neon:

> The correct syntax is (re-search-backward "^\\|[\t ]") with your
> syntax you are searcing for a line starting with a pipe ("|") and
> continuing with white space.  Appanently your buffer doesn't contain
> such a line.
  
  Let me see if I understand the logic of this strange creature called
  "regular expressions":

   "^"      ;; match beginning of line
   "\\|"    ;; seperator for alternatives
   "[\t ]"  ;; match any of: TAB, SPACE

   Am I correct? 
   I get confused by the way that emacs "escapes" metacharacters.

   Thanks again
   tim

-- 
Tim Johnson <tim@johnsons-web.com>
      http://www.alaska-internet-solutions.com