How do I bind a regular expression to a key combination in emacs?

Question

For context, I am something of an emacs newbie. I haven't used it for very long, but have been using it more and more (I like it a lot). Also I'm comfortable with lisp, but not super familiar with elisp.

What I need to do is bind a regular expression to a keyboard combination because I use this particular regex so often.

What I've been doing:

M-C-s ^.*Table\(\(.*\n\)*?GO\)

Note, I used newline above, but I've found that for isearch-forward-regexp, you really need to replace the \n in the regular expression with the result of C-q Q-j. This inserts a literal newline (without ending the command) enabling me to put a newline into the expression and match across lines.

How can I bind this to a key combination?

I vaguely understand that I need to create an elisp function which executes isearch-forward-regexp with the expression, but I'm fuzzy on the details. I've searched google and found most documentation to be a tad confusing.

How can I bind a regular expression to a key combination in emacs?

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Mike Stone had the best answer so far -- not exactly what I was looking for but it worked for what I needed

Edit - this sort of worked, but after storing the macro, when I went back to use it later, I couldn't use it with C-x e. (i.e., if I reboot emacs and then type M-x macro-name, and then C-x e, I get a message in the minibuffer like 'no last kbd macro' or something similar)

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@Mike Stone - Thanks for the information. I tried creating a macro like so:

C-x( M-C-s ^.*Table\(\(.*C-q C-J\)*?GO\) C-x)

This created my macro, but when I executed my macro I didn't get the same highlighting that I ordinarily get when I use isearch-forward-regexp. Instead it just jumped to the end of the next match of the expression. So that doesn't really work for what I need. Any ideas?

Edit: It looks like I can use macros to do what I want, I just have to think outside the box of isearch-forward-regexp. I'll try what you suggested.

Answer 1

You can use macros, just do C-x ( then do everything for the macro, then C-x ) to end the macro, then C-x e will execute the last defined macro. Then, you can name it using M-x name-last-kbd-macro which lets you assign a name to it, which you can then invoke with M-x TESTIT, then store the definition using M-x insert-kbd-macro which will put the macro into your current buffer, and then you can store it in your .emacs file.

Example:

C-x( abc *return* C-x)

Will define a macro to type "abc" and press return.

C-xeee

Executes the above macro immediately, 3 times (first e executes it, then following 2 e's will execute it twice more).

M-x name-last-kbd-macro testit

Names the macro to "testit"

M-x testit

Executes the just named macro (prints "abc" then return).

M-x insert-kbd-macro

Puts the following in your current buffer:

(fset 'testit
   [?a ?b ?c return])

Which can then be saved in your .emacs file to use the named macro over and over again after restarting emacs.