Vim and regular expressions (was Re: [techtalk] Any good HTML editors for Linux?)

[vdf at juno.com]

> > On Tue, Apr 03, 2001 at 12:24:13PM -0700, jennyw wrote:
> > > I always thought vim was just another vi with a few extras. I 
> guess it's got
> > > more than a few extras ... I'm installing it now. It'll be nice 
> to try
> > > something familiar ...
> > > 
> > > Jen
> > 
> > Some of the features include syntax highlighting, support for the 
> arrow
> > keys whilst in edit mode, and straight from vi, regular 
> expressions.
> > 
> > In terms of HTML though, where you nearly always want non-greedy
> > matches, can someone remind me how I do this. Web searches 
> invariably
> > turn up "and you can use regular expression in vim, perl and blah. 
> You
> > may want non-greedy expressions, in which case, try blah in Perl!" 
> and
> > -perl will turn up the same page with perl5, and so on.

An example from "A Practical Guide to the UNIX System" (by Mark G. Sobel)
suggests using
/([^)]*)/
to match the shortest string enclosed within parentheses.  It means,
"Find a left parenthesis, followed by 0 or more things that are NOT a
right parenthesis, followed by a right parenthesis."

The expression
/(.*)/
would find the longest string of 0 or more characters enclosed within
parentheses.

So the trick would be to construct the correct expression using the
beginning and ending characters or strings...

HTH,
Valerie
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