Thus, @samp{[ad]} matches either one @samp{a} or one @samp{d}, and
@samp{[ad]*} matches any string composed of just @samp{a}s and @samp{d}s
-(including the empty string), from which it follows that @samp{c[ad]*r}
+(including the empty string). It follows that @samp{c[ad]*r}
matches @samp{cr}, @samp{car}, @samp{cdr}, @samp{caddaar}, etc.
You can also include character ranges in a character alternative, by
@var{c1} is the first character of the charset to which @var{c2}
belongs.
-You cannot always match all non-@acronym{ASCII} characters with the
-regular expression @code{"[\200-\377]"}. This works when searching a
-unibyte buffer or string (@pxref{Text Representations}), but not in a
-multibyte buffer or string, because many non-@acronym{ASCII}
-characters have codes above @code{#o377}. However, the regular
-expression @code{"[^\000-\177]"} does match all non-@acronym{ASCII}
-characters (see below regarding @samp{^}), in both multibyte and
-unibyte representations, because only the @acronym{ASCII} characters
-are excluded.
-
-A character alternative can also specify named
-character classes (@pxref{Char Classes}). This is a POSIX feature whose
-syntax is @samp{[:@var{class}:]}. Using a character class is equivalent
-to mentioning each of the characters in that class; but the latter is
-not feasible in practice, since some classes include thousands of
+A character alternative can also specify named character classes
+(@pxref{Char Classes}). This is a POSIX feature whose syntax is
+@samp{[:@var{class}:]}. Using a character class is equivalent to
+mentioning each of the characters in that class; but the latter is not
+feasible in practice, since some classes include thousands of
different characters.
@item @samp{[^ @dots{} ]}
mentioned as one of the characters not to match. This is in contrast to
the handling of regexps in programs such as @code{grep}.
+You can specify named character classes, just like in character
+alternatives. For instance, @samp{[^[:ascii:]]} matches any
+non-@acronym{ASCII} character. @xref{Char Classes}.
+
@item @samp{^}
@cindex beginning of line in regexp
When matching a buffer, @samp{^} matches the empty string, but only at the