How to make this RegExp less greedy?

Question

I use visual-regexp to make query regexp search. Consider this text:

\enquote{\Large{text1}} \enquote{\Large{text2}} \enquote{\Large{text3}} \enquote{\Large{text4}}

I want regexp to match every and single macro group (the 4 groups). I invoke a query regexp by C-c q and entered this regexp:

\(\\Large{\)\(.?+\)\(}\)\(}\)

Problem is that it returned one match instead of 4 matches:

the \(.?+\) was very greedy to match all 4 macro groups.

But, when I get each of the 4 groups in its own line I get the desired effect:

Now I could do replace with: \2\4 to get the desired result:

So what I was missing when all were on the same line?

Plus, can you please recommend any good documentation on using regexp/grep in Emacs?

Answer 1

you could use non greedy + like \(\\Large{\)\(.+?\)\(}\)\(}\) (note the inversion of the ? and the +) if you add a ? after a + the + will match the smaller match possible. Note also that .?+ is the same as .*

Answer 2

You want to match "Large, opening brace, anything but a closing brace, the closing brace". This is the corresponding regexp

"\\\\Large{[^}]*}"

Note the regexp would be more complicated if the argument of \Large has groups (i.e. braces) itself. TeXnical note: \Large is a declaration, must not be used as a command with arguments.

re-builder is very handy to practice regexp searches.

Regarding the documentation, the starting point is the Elisp manual: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Regular-Expressions.html#Regular-Expressions (or (info "(elisp)Regular expressions") in Emacs)