[OS X TeX] Search with .* but how to replace?

[Ross Moore]

Hi Herb,

On 25/04/2014, at 10:54, Herbert Schulz <herbs at wideopenwest.com> wrote:

> . I thought that Perl regex used $1, etc., not \1, etc., but what do I know.

You are not wrong.
My understanding of Perl is that  $1 is set for the replacement text only,
whereas \1 is set as soon as the match is made, so that it can be used also later in the pattern.
 e.g.   ([xyz]).*\1   will match   x ... x   or  y ... y  or  z ... z , but store only the x/y/z in $1 .

Presumably \1 is still set for the replacement text.

> 
> Good Luck,
> 
> Herb Schulz
> (herbs at wideopenwest dot com)


Hope this helps,

   Ross