Custom search function for dictionary lookup

Question

I have a plain text dictionary in which each headword is matched by

^# \(† \)?headword,

How can I make a custom search function that relieves me of typing the whole regex every time I want to look up a word? I tried recording a keyboard macro, but that didn't work.

Answer 1

Something like this might do. I wasn't sure how you store the dictionary though.

(defun my-search (word)
  (interactive "sWord: ")
  ;; some code to open your dictionary file
  (goto-char (point-min))
  (re-search-forward (format "^# \\(† \\)?%s," word) nil t))