Regular Expression: using \1 twice

[Luoji]

Hello,

I want to duplicate a line and modify only a part of it. I used the following regular expressions in POSIX to replace my line but it didn't work:

replace: command ([.]*)
by: command \1\nnewcommand \1

---

Example:

text to replace:
command attributes
command other attributes

expected result:
command attributes
newcommand attributes
command other attributes
newcommand other attributes

result with my regexp:
command
newcommand attributes
command
newcommand other attributes

---

How come that \1 is only applied at the last occurence?

Regards,


Luoji.

[Jens Hollmann]

Very interesting! Don't put "[]" around the "." and it works! I don't know exactly why but the "[]" are at least not necessary because "." already matches any character.

[Andreas]

[.] matches a . and nothing else
while . matches any character

Within [], most special characters are not special any longer!

See Help/Help Topics/Contents/Reference Information/Regular Expressions/Special Characters