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From: Ed Morton <mortons...@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.lang.javascript,comp.lang.python,gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Quickie - Regexp for a string not at the beginning of the line
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 21:00:32 -0500
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On 10/25/2012 8:08 PM, Rivka Miller wrote:
> On Oct 25, 2:27 pm, Danny <dann90...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Why you just don't give us the string/input, say a line or two, and what you want off of it, so we can tell better what to suggest
>
> no one has really helped yet.

Because there is no solution - there IS no _RE_ that will match a string not at 
the beginning of a line.

Now if you want to know how to extract a string that matches an RE in awk, 
that'd be (just one way):

    awk 'match($0,/.[$]hello[$]/) { print substr($0,RSTART+1,RLENGTH-1) }'

and other tools would have their ways of producing the same output, but that's 
not the question you're asking.

     Ed.
>
> I want to search and modify.
>
> I dont wanna be tied to a specific language etc so I just want a
> regexp and as many versions as possible. Maybe I should try in emacs
> and so I am now posting to emacs groups also, although javascript has
> rich set of regexp facilities.
>
> examples
>
> $hello$ should not be selected but
> not hello but all of the $hello$ and $hello$ ... $hello$ each one
> selected
>
> =================
> original post
> =================
>
>
> Hello Programmers,
>
> I am looking for a regexp for a string not at the beginning of the
> line.
>
> For example, I want to find $hello$ that does not occur at the
> beginning of the string, ie all $hello$ that exclude ^$hello$.
>
> In addition, if you have a more difficult problem along the same
> lines, I would appreciate it. For a single character, eg < not at the
> beginning of the line, it is easier, ie
>
> ^[^<]+<
>
> but I cant use the same method for more than one character string as
> permutation is present and probably for more than one occurrence,
> greedy or non-greedy version of [^<]+ would pick first or last but not
> the middle ones, unless I break the line as I go and use the non-
> greedy version of +. I do have the non-greedy version available, but
> what if I didnt?
>
> If you cannot solve the problem completely, just give me a quick
> solution with the first non beginning of the line and I will go from
> there as I need it in a hurry.
>
> Thanks
>