🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> On Mon, 28 Dec 1992 13:39:23 GMT, pat@gsfc.nasa.gov (patrick m. ryan)
>>>>> said:

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

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

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

Patrick> 	(replace-regexp "^>" "")

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

Ok, here's the deal. What emacs does is to do a re-search-forward for your
search string, deletes it, and inserts the replacement string. There goes
the "^>". Now, it repeats the re-search-forward. Lo and behold, point is
sitting just to the left of the search string "^>". It gleefully replaces
it with the replacement string, and repeats itself.

You may want to use querey-replace-regexp instead. Or do two replace-regexp
commands, the first change "^>" into something else, like "><", then do a
second replace-regexp on the new string.

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Northeastern's Stainless Steel Rat          ratinox@meceng.coe.northeastern.edu
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