function needed to replace short, static list of keywords

Question

In my workflow I copy emails into an orgmode file. I'd like to have head of the email formatted. In english emails (just as an explanation) I'd like to have *To:* instead of To:, because orgmode then prints the word between the two stars in bold. The word "To:" occurs at the beginning of a new line, but empty spaces may occur before the "To:" in the new line.

So the question is, can you write a function that replaces in a region (!) the words

"Von:", "Gesendet:", "An:", "Cc:", "Betreff:"

with

 "*Von:*", , "*Gesendet:*", "*An:*", "*Cc:*", "*Betreff:*" 

under the condition that the string is at the beginning of a new line, multiple empty spaces before the string are allowed.

I put the strings into "", but in the copied emails there are no "" around them, it's only Von:, of course.

Let's assume the name of the function is "email-header". I'd mark a region in a buffer and do M-x email-header and in the region all mentioned keywords shall be replaced as described.

Yeah, well, I'm only a user and hacking an example like https://stackoverflow.com/a/2592685 is far beyond my capabilities.

Answer 1

Try this, after selecting the region:

M-x query-replace-regexp
RET
^ *\(Von\|Gesendet\|Cc\):
RET
*\1*:

(where RET is the Enter key).

That will replace matches of

• zero or more space chars; followed by either Von, Gesendet, or Cc; followed by a colon (:); followed by a space char

with

• The matched text Von, Gesendet, or Cc, wrapped in * chars.

The \1 says to insert the text matched by the 1st regexp group.