01-08-2002
Just to clarify, vi uses regular expression, as opposed to the shell expression you are probably more used to. The reason ".*" acts as a wildcard is that "." means "Any number or character". The "*" means "zero or more of the preceeding character". You could also use something like:
".+", which means one or more of the preceeding character (a non-null). So, Something like :g/S+[0-9]+/d could mean globally (g), search for a line with at least one "S" in it, with at least one number right after it, then delete the line...
It takes some getting used to in switching between shell and regular expressions... I still have a hard time with it.
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regex(3) Library Functions Manual regex(3)
Name
re_comp, re_exec - regular expression handler
Syntax
char *re_comp(s)
char *s;
re_exec(s)
char *s;
Description
The subroutine compiles a string into an internal form suitable for pattern matching. The subroutine checks the argument string against
the last string passed to
The subroutine returns 0 if the string s was compiled successfully; otherwise a string containing an error message is returned. If is
passed 0 or a null string, it returns without changing the currently compiled regular expression.
The subroutine returns 1 if the string s matches the last compiled regular expression, 0 if the string s failed to match the last compiled
regular expression, and -1 if the compiled regular expression was invalid (indicating an internal error).
The strings passed to both and may have trailing or embedded newline characters; they are terminated by nulls. The regular expressions
recognized are described in the manual entry for given the above difference.
Diagnostics
The subroutine returns -1 for an internal error.
The subroutine returns one of the following strings if an error occurs:
No previous regular expression
Regular expression too long
unmatched (
missing ]
too many () pairs
unmatched )
See Also
ed(1), ex(1), egrep(1), fgrep(1), grep(1)
regex(3)