On Thursday, 1 January 2015 13:02:45 UTC, Christian Brabandt wrote:
> Hi Jeff!
>
> On Do, 01 Jan 2015, Jeff Baxter wrote:
>
> > Just asked this question on stackoverflow but the comment shows it seems to
> > be a version-specific problem.
> >
> > I have a simple text file:
> >
> > blah.
> > [{}]
> > [{foo}]
> >
> > My cursor is at the beginning of the file. I want to search for (possibly
> > empty) strings embraced with [{}].
> >
> > So the regex pattern is "\[{.*}\]",right?
> >
> > When I use the normal search
> >
> > /\[{.*}\]
> >
> > The cursor is relocated at the second line, good!
> >
> > But if I use the search function
> >
> > :echo search("\[{.*}\]")
> >
> > The cursor goes to the final . of the first line and the result of echo is
> > 1, meaning the first match is in line 1.
> >
> > Can you reproduce this? And if yes, why and how can I get the same result
> > as the normal search using a function?
>
> You are using double quotes in the first search argument. The backslash
> in the double quote has a special meaning and basically just means to
> use the character after it. In your case the search function sees at it
> first argument the pattern [{.*}] which happens to match in the last
> column of line 1.
>
> The solution is, to either use single quotes or escape the character
> twice, if you use double quote.
>
> This is explained at the help at :h expr-quote
>
> Best,
> Christian
> --
> Alles Unbekannte gilt für groß.
> -- Publius Cornelius Tacitus (55-120)
Hi Christian,
Thanks for your answer - it works and makes good sense now. I've tested the
single quote on egrep and it works the same way.
Jeff
P.S. as an off-topic subject, I still feel like there are some inconsistencies
in the shell in this matter, which potentially will confuse me some time.
An example that in shell the quotes work differently:
$ echo "\n"
\n
$ echo '\n'
\n
$ echo -e "\n"
$ echo -e '\n'
I understand in shell single quotes also means literal strings, but the above
example seems to contradict this fact.
A possible explanation is, the option -e forces the expansion in both cases.
Anyway this does not bother me for now...
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