🚀 go-pugleaf

   I seem to be having a little trouble with regexps that require newlines. 
   Say for example I want to convert standard quotes (like "arglebarge")
   into TeX-style quotes (like ``arglebarge''), but where the quote can
   span one ore more lines. I've tried things like regexp-replacing
   "\(\(^J\|.\)*\)" with ``\1'', but the newline seems to cause problems.
   Of course, to get the newline I have to use quoted-insert, but when
   I enter it it clears the minibuffer (but it still gets inserted into
   the regexp). But the above regexp still doesn't work!

This is an interesting problem.  I fiddled with it a bit.   At first I
thought it was a problem with two parenthesized expressions within one
another, but it turns out that's not it.  The problem is that regexps
match as far as they can go; i.e., .* doesn't match "f", it matches
"foobarbaz" until the next newline.  So, your regexp says match a double
quote, then ANY characters until the next double quote.  But, "ANY
characters" includes a double quote!  So, that regexp will match from
the first double quote to the last double quote in the buffer.  So, I
thought, try `[^"]' instead of `.'; but, since complement character sets
include newlines, you can just use

	"\([^"]+\)"

   I guess what I am really asking is: is there an easy way to put newlines
   in regexps?

No, and this is a problem.  I've always thought that emacs regexps
should have a special character that matches ALL chacters, including
newlines.  Not having this makes writing certain regexps cumbersome. 

--
Raul Acevedo
acevedo@athena.mit.edu

"Remember, Information is not knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom;
Wisdom is not truth; Truth is not beauty; Beauty is not love;
Love is not music; Music is the best."
	 - Frank Zappa