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From: byron@archone.tamu.edu (Byron Rakitzis)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Multiple line regexps
Keywords: regexp, multiple lines
Message-ID: <16790@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Date: 3 Jun 91 03:17:10 GMT
References: <1991Jun2.231351.10229@trl.oz.au>
Sender: usenet@helios.TAMU.EDU
Distribution: comp
Organization: College of Architecture, Texas A&M University.
Lines: 17

In article <1991Jun2.231351.10229@trl.oz.au> soh@andromeda.trl.OZ.AU (kam hung soh) writes:
>I would like to write a regular expression which can look for patterns
>longer than one line.  For example, I want to find the first line of
>each paragraph.

Most Unix utilities are line based, so no dice.

However, emacs will let you put a literal newline in the regexp, just like
any other character. Simply escape it with a C-q first.

I would like to write a "stream sam", after having seen and read about the
sam text editor. It seems to me that sed's usefulness is very limited in
certain circumstances, and writing obfuscated sed scripts making use of
the hold space just doesn't do it for me. 
--
Byron Rakitzis
byron@archone.tamu.edu