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what does \_. means in vim ?  explain to me character by character

Response from chatgpt:

In Vim regular expressions, \_. is a sequence that represents any character including a newline. 
Here is an explanation of each character:

The backslash \ is an escape character that is used to indicate that the following character has a special meaning in Vim regular expressions. In this case, it is used to escape the underscore character _.
The underscore _ matches any single character, but it does not match newline characters by default.
The dot . matches any character except newline characters.

Therefore, when you combine the \ and _ characters with the dot . character, you get \_., which matches any character, including newline characters
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  • The underscore _ matches any single character, but it does NOT match newline characters by default. The dot . matches any character EXCEPT newline characters. Therefore, when you combine the \ and _ characters with the dot . character, you get _., which matches any character, INCLUDING newline characters ??? No+No= Yes ?????
    – andrew_ysk
    Apr 7 at 22:30
  • Just… don't trust ChatGPT, generally. It's good at producing convincing BS (at best).
    – D. Ben Knoble
    Apr 8 at 15:53
  • LOL. i agree with you this one. I have being using for sometime and realized many time it is a twist and turning tongue.. although sometime it does producing usable data..
    – andrew_ysk
    Apr 9 at 10:50

1 Answer 1

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I prefer the explanation of the Vim doc:

\_. Matches any single character or end-of-line.
    Careful: "\_.*" matches all text to the end of the buffer!
\_x Where "x" is any of the characters above: The character class with
    end-of-line added

\_ is an atom modifier that add the new line to some atom matching like . or \s, or\d where:

  • . match any character but new line \_. match any character including new line.
  • \s match any space character but new line \_s match any space including new line.
  • \d match any digit character and not new line \_d match any digit or new line.
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    a ya.. that's more like it.. that's what i found out when tried on vim several times... so the gptchat is totally bs on this stuff. a lot of bs i have encountered on it.
    – andrew_ysk
    Apr 7 at 22:42
  • ok.. now that you explained like this.. i understood.. thanks a lot. i was like starring on vim help :h _ ...but totally can't understand anything.. However your explanation is wonderful. Thanks
    – andrew_ysk
    Apr 7 at 22:56

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