I want to match two or more consecutive lines with numbers only, e.g.:
abc
1
2
abc
In Emacs, my regex is \(^ *[[:digit:]]+ *$^J\)\{2,\}, but it doesn't match any. I find \(^ *[[:digit:]]+ *^J\)\{2,\} can match.
Isn't it true that $ doesn't consume a character, but signals the end of a line (just before a newline character)?
In Python, I remember it doesn't matter that I specify $\n or \n. So why does it matter in Emacs? Thanks.
Isn't it true that $ doesn't consume a character, but signals the end of a line (just before a newline character)?
$ can only be used at the end of a regexp, or just before \) or \|.
$
is similar to ‘^’ but matches only at the end of a line. Thus, ‘x+$’ matches a string of one ‘x’ or more at the end of a line. For historical compatibility reasons, ‘$’ can be used with this meaning only at the end of the regular expression, or before ‘)’ or ‘\|’.
What these "historical reasons" are, I don't know.
So if you want to use $ and ^J you can replace $^J with \($\)^J and it will work as expected, though there is no need to express the end of a line in this redundant way.
Note that the $ is redundant when used just before a ^J character (aka LF or newline or \n). So while @JordonBiondo has the right answer, I think a better alternative is to just ditch the $.
Using \n to represent the newline should work (compare this description of Emacs newline representation. This re puts point just after the 2:
(re-search-forward "\\(^\\s-*[0-9]+\\s-*\n\\)\\{2,\\}" nil t)
abc
1
2
abc
