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From: Colin Walters <walters@cis.ohio-state.edu>
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Subject: Re: "Invalid preceding regular expression" in <9d45jl$67c$1@akk3.akk.uni-karlsruhe.de>
Date: 10 May 2001 11:43:50 -0400
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"Robin S. Socha" <robin@socha.net> writes:

> > "Robin S. Socha" <robin@socha.net> writes:
> 
> >> Signaling: (invalid-regexp "Invalid preceding regular expression")
> >> string-match("disco sucks f**k everything"
> 
> > I believe your problem is that the regexp * operator can only
> > apply to constant-length subexpressions; In other words, the "f**"
> > is invalid.  I'm not sure what your application is, but you might
> > want to check out `regexp-quote', or change the regexp to be like
> > "disco sucks f..k everything"...
> 
> That was not me. That was his organization:
> <9d45jl$67c$1@akk3.akk.uni-karlsruhe.de>

I see.  Do you know where the string "disco sucks f**k everything" is
coming from?  It looks like a BBDB bug to me; the string is being used
as a regexp, when it should probably be passed to `regexp-quote'
first.

I suggest to post this on the relevant BBDB mailing list.