[Deipotent]

If you have lines of the following format “ABCDE: .abc3;.s32”, and have incremental search enabled, all matching lines are highlighted with a regex of “: . *(.([[:alnum:];.])*)”, but only a single match is highlighted with “: . *(.([[:alnum:];.])*)n”

[CrashNBurn]

I’m confused as to what you are searching for.
Especially since you are using multiple instances of “*”
— Which with regex are rarely necessary, and frequently will mangle your search results.

[[:alnum:];.] —> means match *ANYTHING*

You haven’t escaped the period. and it will match any char.
Possibly you meant:
[[:alnum:];.]

But then, this: ([[:alnum:];.])*
Means match any alphanumeric plus semi-colon plus a dot any number of times, or not at all. Meaning it will also match empty lines – that only have a carriage return.

Possibly, what you meant as your regex:

: ([[:alnum:];.])+n

[Deipotent]

You are correct that the first period is not necessary, that the period in the character set should be escaped, and that the second * should be a +. My regex is a little rusty.

The first * should also be a +, as I want it to match one or more spaces, so the regex should probably be

: +([[:alnum:];.]+)n

The issue I reported with only a single match being highlighted is still present, even with the updated regex.

[CrashNBurn]

My Test file:

teststring

	teststring

	teststring

	teststring

	

	

	

	ABCDE: .abc3;.s32

	ABCDE: .abc3;.s32

	ABCDE: .abc3;.s32

	ABCDE: .abc3;.s32

This regex,

: +([[:alnum:];.]+)n

Matches the first 3 ABCDE lines.
This regex,

: +([[:alnum:];.]+)$

Matches all 4.
And with this file:

teststring

	teststring

	teststring

	teststring

	

	

	

	ABCDE: .abc3;.s32

	ABCDE:  .abc3;.s32

	ABCDE:   .abc3;.s32

	ABCDE:    .abc3;.s32

This regex:

:[ ]+([[:alnum:];.])+$

Matches all 4 ABCDE’s.

And with this file:

teststring

	teststring

	teststring

	teststring

	

	

	

	ABCDE: .abc3;.s32

	ABCDE:  .abc3;.s32

	ABCDE:   .abc3;.s32

	ABCDE:    .abc3;.s32

	

	

This regex:

:[ ]+([[:alnum:];.])+n

Matches all 4 ABCDE’s.

[Deipotent]

In your last two regex’s you place the space in square brackets (ie. “[ ]” instead of ” “). Why is this ?

Is that considered a better/clearer way of writing it ?

[CrashNBurn]

I do it so I can see at a glance that there is in fact a space being matched.

Regex strings are hard enough to look at as it is :-)
Functionally it is likely no different, but visually, and for working with them, much easier for me to figure out:
[ ]+ than
+

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