Re: patsubst: multiline text

Eric Blake wrote:

> The current regexp syntax already IS documented.  In the m4 manual,
> http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/manual/m4.html#Regexp has a link to:
> http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Regexps.html#Regexps
>
> (well, I had to click through a few pages to find it; perhaps we can
> patch the m4 manual to have a more direct link...)

NoNo, that's what I meant with:

> Message-ID: <[email protected]>
> Archived-At: <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.m4.general/541>
>
> ...  but the statements in m4.info referring to the emacs regex syntax
> seem to need qualification, so to speak.

Of course I read the m4 info pages having the same links and tried
various combinations of emacs backslashed special characters.  The
non-greedy "*?"/"+?" definitely do not work, with or without
backslashes, as well as for example "\`" for start-of-buffer or "\'" for
end-of-buffer.

The emacs links serve as hints at best, but as it is impossible to know
exactly what works and what doesn't, they are of not much use.  Your
explanation that m4 regular expressions are line based were much better
for my purposes, but don't explain everything.

The m4 manual regarding regular expressions really need qualification!


clemens