From 47376da7e27722570c742020a7052b4881580c2b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Eli Zaretskii Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2021 10:36:59 +0300 Subject: [PATCH] ; * lisp/subr.el (match-string): Clarify doc string. --- lisp/subr.el | 13 +++++++------ 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/lisp/subr.el b/lisp/subr.el index 029302a4f3e..2d2794cfd1f 100644 --- a/lisp/subr.el +++ b/lisp/subr.el @@ -4668,19 +4668,20 @@ rather than your caller's match data." (defun match-string (num &optional string) "Return the string of text matched by the previous search or regexp operation. -NUM specifies which parenthesized expression in the last regexp. -Zero means the entire text matched by the whole regexp or whole string. +NUM specifies the number of the parenthesized sub-expression in the last +regexp whose match to return. Zero means return the text matched by the +entire regexp or the whole string. -The return value is nil if NUMth pair didn't match, or there were -less than NUM pairs. +The return value is nil if NUMth pair didn't match anything, or if there +were fewer than NUM sub-expressions in the regexp used in the search. STRING should be given if the last search was by `string-match' on STRING. If STRING is nil, the current buffer should be the -same buffer the search/match was performed in. +same buffer as the one in which the search/match was performed. Note that many functions in Emacs modify the match data, so this function should be called \"close\" to the function that did the -match. In particular, saying (for instance) +regexp search. In particular, saying (for instance) `M-: (looking-at \"[0-9]\") RET' followed by `M-: (match-string 0) RET' interactively is seldom meaningful, since the Emacs command loop may modify the match data." -- 2.39.5