[OS X TeX] regular expression matching in TeXShop

[Alan Munn]

I was thinking about a simple solution to Alain's problem of 
inserting a new column into a tabular by using a regex replace, but I 
seem to have (re-)encountered a problem:  the beginning of line match 
character doesn't seem to work as expected.

Suppose I have the following table:

\begin{tabular}{lllllllll}
A & B & C & D & E & F & G & H & I & J\\
A & B & C & D & E & F & G & H & I & J\\
A & B & C & D & E & F & G & H & I & J\\
A & B & C & D & E & F & G & H & I & J\\
A & B & C & D & E & F & G & H & I & J\\
A & B & C & D & E & F & G & H & I & J\\
A & B & C & D & E & F & G & H & I & J\\
\end{tabular}


So the regular expression

^(([^\&]*\&){1,3})

Should match the first 3 columns of the table (assuming I position 
the cursor before the first character of the first row.)

This would allow an easy way to insert a column after e.g. the third 
row, by making the replace field "\1  & "

But for some reason, the expression doesn't seem to pay attention to 
the beginning of the line, so if you search at the beginning of the 
first line of the table, and it correctly selects the first three 
columns, but when you click 'Next' you get the next three columns 
rather than the first three of the rest of the line.

Why is this?  Simple expressions like ^foo do seem to match at the 
beginning of the line.  Is this my error, or a bug?

I've noticed this before, and just given up trying to match line 
beginnings, although it's a very useful thing to be able to do.


Alan

-- 
Alan Munn                                                   amunn at msu.edu
Department of Linguistics                                   amunn at acm.org
and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages   Fax.  +1-517-432-2736
Michigan State University, East Lansing MI 48824    Tel.  +1-517-355-7491

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