Re: Transform part of a message body

"@lbutlr" <[email protected]> writes:
> Right, but what I want is to match any lien that contains nothing but
> the same characters repeated x times. So I want to match
>
> ===============
> ------------------ 
> qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq
> \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
> /////////////////////////////////
> [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
>
> Etc.
>
> But not match -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Gnu sed (and possibly other sed's) can use this regexp to find the
character sequences you want:

    \(.\)\1{x,}

"\(.\)" matches any single (non-newline) character.  "\1" matches
whatever the "\(.\)" matched (which will be one character).  "\1{x,}",
where you replace "x" with a number, means x or more copies of whatever
the "\(.\)" matched.

You probably want to change "." to be more restrictive.  You can write
"[^ ]" to specify that the character may not be a space, for instance.

Dale