Special search commands

Sometimes one needs to do a search that involves a pattern, rather than a fixed string. We call a string a pattern if it describes (in a special language) a whole class of strings that could result in a successful search. The language for such patterns is given in the next chapter on regular expressions. It may also be needed sometimes to search for strings that contain an end of line. If such a string is taken out it would result in putting together two lines. Also this kind of searches should be dealt with via the language of regular expressions. Finally the regular expressions should also be used when the replacement string contains an end of line, unless the user likes to see this end of line inserted in the text as a funny character (sometimes needed in a binary file).