Matching a literal asterisk (*) in a regexp

Question

I am trying to write a regexp to mean:

At least one of a few punctuation marks followed by any number of blank spaces followed by a literal star is to be replaced by all those punctuation marks followed by a literal star.

So, when doing interactively,

\([.,?!:;]+\)[[:blank:]]*\* is replaced by \1*

But in elisp, I am not able to get the literal star. I tried:

\\(\[\.,;:?।\]\+\\)\[\[:blank:\]\]\*\\* to be replaced by \\1\\*

But it does not work.

Will you please point what is wrong? I think I am not escaping the literal star correctly. But I am not able to see what is the correct method.

Answer 1

The correct string is "\\([.,?!:;]+\\)[[:blank:]]*\\*".

Here's trick: evaluate (read-string "regexp: "), enter your regexp, and look at the result.

If you use Helm, helm-regexp is a great tool for exploring regexps, then converting them to strings via the Kill regexp as sexp action.