bug in elisp... or in elisper???

[ken]

Fellow elispers,

Something seems to be amiss in the search syntax here:

 (setq aname-re-str
"<a\\([\s-\\|\n]+?\\)name=\"\\(.*?\\)\"\\([\s-\\|\n]*?\\)>\\(\\(.\\|\n\\)*?\\)</a\\(\\(
\\|\t\\|\n\\)*?\\)>" )

;;Here's a function to use the above RE and return diagnostics:

(defun test-aname-search ()
  (interactive)
  (re-search-forward aname-re-str)
  (message "1: \"%s\" 2: \"%s\" 3: \"%s\" 4: \"%s\" 5: \"%s\" 6: \"%s\"
7: \"%s\" 8: \"%s\""
           (match-string 1)
           (match-string 2)
           (match-string 3)
           (match-string 4)
           (match-string 5)
           (match-string 6)
           (match-string 7)
           (match-string 8)))


Here are some strings to search on:

<h3><a name="thisname">Any Text--
Hot Stuff</a></h3>

<h1
class="title"
><a
name="heres-a-name"
>
the</a
></h1
>

<h3><a name="duplicate">Any Text--
Hot Crud</a></h3>


The problem is that the 5th match-string should be either empty or
whitespace.  But it consistently contains the last character of of the
4th match-string.  And these two matches are separated by the literal
character string, "</a"!!  What's up with this?


Wishing I hadn't quit beer,
ken

-- 
Anything is easy if you know how to do it.