44.6.4 Saving and Restoring the Match Data

When you call a function that may do a search, you may need to save and restore the match data around that call, if you want to preserve the match data from an earlier search for later use. Here is an example that shows the problem that arises if you fail to save the match data:

(re-search-forward "The \\(cat \\)")
     ⇒ 48
(foo)                   ; Perhaps foo does
                        ;   more searching.
(match-end 0)
     ⇒ 61              ; Unexpected result—not 48!

You can save and restore the match data with save-match-data:

Special Form: save-match-data body…

This special form executes body, saving and restoring the match data around it.

You can use set-match-data together with match-data to imitate the effect of the special form save-match-data. This is useful for writing code that can run in Emacs 18. Here is how:

(let ((data (match-data)))
  (unwind-protect
      …   ; May change the original match data.
    (set-match-data data)))

SXEmacs automatically saves and restores the match data when it runs process filter functions (see Filter Functions) and process sentinels (see Sentinels).