[ale] VI vs perl RE question

[Geoffrey]

Joe Knapka wrote:
> Jim wrote:
> 
> 
>>I'm trying to use vi to search for something enclosed in quotes, using 
>>perl RE I get a hit with $var =~/"(.*?)"/;  But using the same re in vi 
>> 
>>
> 
> So this is, "a quote, possibly followed by something, followed by 
> another quote".
> (The question mark is redundant, since * already means "0 or more 
> occurrences".)

I would expect that the ? says 'at least one character.'

> 
> /".*"
> 
>  should work. But you probably really mean
> 
> /"[^"]*"
> 
> That is, a quote, possibly followed by non-quote stuff, followed by 
> another quote.
> If you want to do the grouping you need to escape the parens (but not the
> brackets, which is weird IMO):
> 
> /"\([^"]*\)"
> 
> If you're doing it in a :s/// command, remember to specify which lines 
> you want
> to search; eg
> 
> :%s/"\([^"]*\)"/\1/gc
> 
> to replace "X" with X throughout the document.
> 
> -- JK
> 
> 
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-- 
Until later, Geoffrey