Info Catalog eintr: sentence-end eintr: Regexp Search eintr: forward-sentence

eintr: re-search-forward

 
 12.2 The ‘re-search-forward’ Function
 =====================================
 
 The ‘re-search-forward’ function is very like the ‘search-forward’
 function.  (The ‘search-forward’ Function search-forward.)
 
    ‘re-search-forward’ searches for a regular expression.  If the search
 is successful, it leaves point immediately after the last character in
 the target.  If the search is backwards, it leaves point just before the
 first character in the target.  You may tell ‘re-search-forward’ to
 return ‘t’ for true.  (Moving point is therefore a side effect.)
 
    Like ‘search-forward’, the ‘re-search-forward’ function takes four
 arguments:
 
   1. The first argument is the regular expression that the function
      searches for.  The regular expression will be a string between
      quotation marks.
 
   2. The optional second argument limits how far the function will
      search; it is a bound, which is specified as a position in the
      buffer.
 
   3. The optional third argument specifies how the function responds to
      failure: ‘nil’ as the third argument causes the function to signal
      an error (and print a message) when the search fails; any other
      value causes it to return ‘nil’ if the search fails and ‘t’ if the
      search succeeds.
 
   4. The optional fourth argument is the repeat count.  A negative
      repeat count causes ‘re-search-forward’ to search backwards.
 
    The template for ‘re-search-forward’ looks like this:
 
      (re-search-forward "REGULAR-EXPRESSION"
                      LIMIT-OF-SEARCH
                      WHAT-TO-DO-IF-SEARCH-FAILS
                      REPEAT-COUNT)
 
    The second, third, and fourth arguments are optional.  However, if
 you want to pass a value to either or both of the last two arguments,
 you must also pass a value to all the preceding arguments.  Otherwise,
 the Lisp interpreter will mistake which argument you are passing the
 value to.
 
    In the ‘forward-sentence’ function, the regular expression will be
 the value of the variable ‘sentence-end’.  In simple form, that is:
 
      "[.?!][]\"')}]*\\($\\|  \\|  \\)[
      ]*"
 
 The limit of the search will be the end of the paragraph (since a
 sentence cannot go beyond a paragraph).  If the search fails, the
 function will return ‘nil’; and the repeat count will be provided by the
 argument to the ‘forward-sentence’ function.
 

Info Catalog eintr: sentence-end eintr: Regexp Search eintr: forward-sentence