Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!EDDIE.MIT.EDU!think!compass!worley
From: think!compass!worley@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (Dale Worley)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs
Subject: Matching multiple lines with regex
Message-ID: <8903161534.AA03948@galaxy.compass.com>
Date: 16 Mar 89 15:34:31 GMT
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Distribution: gnu
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   I'm using the regex code out of 18.52 and would like to construct a
   regular expression that will match *all* of the characters in a string
   of text containing newlines. I tried ".*" (the most obvious), but it
   just matches up to the first newline. I haven't got newlines being treated
   specially in any way (I.E. as "or"s) so I can't figure out why this is
   happening.

The reason it is happening is because '.' is defined to not match
newlines.  (See Info node "Regexps", or search for 'anychar' (the
internal code for the '.'  regexp) in regex.c and examine the code in
those areas.)  If you want to match newline also, you will have to say
'\(.\|^J\)', or in C, "\\(.\\|\n\\)".

Dale