Question

In my latex file, I defined

\newcommand{\replace}[2]{\textcolor{red}{\sout{#1} }\textcolor{blue}{{#2}}}

Just to highlight changes. So in my paper draft, there are many occurrences of

\replace{old text}{new text}

Now the paper is accepted, and I want to get a clean version. How can I use emacs Regex replacement to change all of them to

new text

Answer 1

A very simple way to do this is to modify your replace command so that it only prints the new text:

\newcommand{\replace}[2]{#2}

---

Otherwise, I would do this with a keyboard macro such as the following:

C-s           ;; isearch-forward
\             ;; self-insert-command
replace{      ;; self-insert-command * 8
RET           ;; newline
<left>        ;; backward-char
ESC <C-right> ;; forward-sexp
C-SPC         ;; set-mark-command
C-r           ;; isearch-backward
\             ;; self-insert-command
replace       ;; self-insert-command * 7
RET           ;; newline
C-w           ;; kill-region
2*C-SPC       ;; set-mark-command
ESC <C-right> ;; forward-sexp
DEL           ;; delete-backward-char
C-u C-SPC     ;; set-mark-command
C-d           ;; delete-char

The logic behind this keyboard macro is that you search for \replace{ commands, then use forward-sexp and backward-sexp to move around balanced pairs of `curly brackets.

Edit: note that the binding for forward-sexp is traditionally written as C-M-<right>, but such a key press might be intercepted by your window manager (a very frequent behaviour for Linux boxes at least). It is therefore often easier to type ESCC-<right> instead.