Question

I’m trying to write a RegEx that will match any line that contains “.wpd”, and then match all lines after that until it reaches a blank line (including the blank line).

This is what I’ve tried:

/\v^.*.wpd\_.\{-}^\s*$

However, the non-greedy operator \{-} after the “all characters including new lines” character class \{-} doesn’t seem to work. If I use

/\v^.*.wpd\_.*

that will match the next line containing “.wpd” and then all lines after that. However, as soon as I change the * to \{-}, it doesn’t match anything at all.

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

Answer 1

You cannot use the atom ^ (same for $) inside the regexp, it has its special meaning only at the front (back); elsewhere, it’s taken as the literal char. Use \n to match a newline inside the regexp, as shown by perreal’s answer.