Am 24.11.2006 um 22:14 schrieb Dieter Wilhelm:
Just for completeness: where to look for the answer? In AWK, Perl, an
Elisp function on the Emacs wiki?
Into this list – or its archive(s)! This kind of question was answered more than once. This year, last year, ... It might be time to put it into an FAQ or a Wiki. Hints are given in the Elisp info doc on Regexp (where the full description can be found):
`.' (Period)
is a special character that matches any single character
except a newline.
`[^ ... ]'
A complemented character alternative can match a newline,
unless newline is mentioned as one of the characters not
to match. This is in contrast to the handling of regexps
in programs such as `grep'.
So "{[^}]*}" stands for 'a region that starts with `{´ and has no `}´ until the final `}´ is hit; between both braces any number (starting with 0) of any character except `}´ can appear.'