Since this variable affects all regular expression search and match
constructs, you should bind it temporarily for as small as possible
- a part of the code.
+ a part of the code, and only where the Lisp code affected by the
+ binding performs searches whose regexp was produced from interactive
+ user input. In other words, this variable should only be used to tell
+ regexp search primitives how to interpret whitespace typed by the
+ user.
@end defvar
-@node POSIX Regexps
-@section POSIX Regular Expression Searching
+@node Longest Match
+@section Longest-match searching for regular expression matches
@cindex backtracking and POSIX regular expressions
The usual regular expression functions do backtracking when necessary