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copied!<p>In general, you can delete text that matches a given regexp by using the empty string <code>""</code> as the replacement in the two functions you mention. However, as others mentioned in the comments above, your regular expression is faulty.</p> <p>For instance, if your buffer contains the following text:</p> <pre><code>1. My todo list 1.1. Brush teeth 1.2. Floss 2. My favorite movies 2.1. Star Wars episodes 4-6 </code></pre> <p>and you would like to get rid of the numbers at the beginning of each line, you could place the cursor at the beginning of the buffer and then type <code>M-C-%</code> (that is, you press at a time: ALT, CTRL, Shift, 5) to invoke the command <code>query-replace-regexp</code>. You'll get asked two parameters in the minibuffer, first the regexp to match than the replacement string. So, in our example, you could use the following regexp:</p> <pre><code>\([0-9]\.\)+\s- </code></pre> <p>as the first parameter, and simply hit ENTER for the second parameter, i.e., don't specify anything as the replacement. That way, the replacement is the empty string: you replace what ever matches the regexp with nothing.</p> <p><code>query-replace-regexp</code> will ask you interactively for every match if you want to replace it or if you want to skip it. This is the "query"-part in <code>query-replace-regexp</code> and it is helpful to see if the regexp you came up with actually matches what you thought it does. If you're sure it does, you can type <code>!</code> to make Emacs replace the remaining matches without asking every time.</p> <p>If you use <code>M-x replace-regexp</code> instead of <code>M-C-%</code> Emacs will replace every match without asking for input at every match.</p> <p>For the special case that you'd like to delete whole lines when a certain part of the line matches a regexp, there's also <code>delete-matching-lines</code> and its evil, goatee-wearing twin brother from a parallel universe <code>delete-non-matching-lines</code>.</p>

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