strange replace-regexp behavior

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Article #3288

#3288

From: patrick m. ryan
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 13:39

33 lines
1512 bytes

	I was trying to remove a leading column of '>' characters
from some text and got some strange behavior from replace-regexp.
I have text something like this:

>In article 999, joe@blow said:
>>blah blah blah
>> blah blah blah

I wanted to remove the first '>' in each line.  Thus, I did:

	(replace-regexp "^>" "")

Instead of removing just the first '>' in each line, it removed
the whole sequence of '>' characters.  It acted as though I
has used "^>*" for the first argument.  I ended up with:

In article 999, joe@blow said:
blah blah blah
 blah blah blah

I'm using Epoch 4.2 on a SPARC 10 under SunOS 4.1.3.

Any help would be appreciated.

thanks,
pat

--
"I have a cunning plan." -- Baldric
                                                             patrick m. ryan
     nasa / goddard space flight center / oceans and ice branch / hughes stx
                     pat@jaameri.gsfc.nasa.gov / zmpmr@charney.gsfc.nasa.gov

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Message-ID: <1992Dec28.133923.27974@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>

Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!think.com!ames!nsisrv!pat

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Newsgroups: comp.emacs,gnu.emacs.help,gnu.epoch.misc
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!think.com!ames!nsisrv!pat
From: pat@gsfc.nasa.gov (patrick m. ryan)
Subject: strange replace-regexp behavior
Message-ID: <1992Dec28.133923.27974@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Summary: replace-regexp isn't working properly
Keywords: replace regexp emacs epoch
Sender: usenet@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov (Usenet)
Nntp-Posting-Host: jaameri.gsfc.nasa.gov
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 13:39:23 GMT
Lines: 33