> I suppose the use of the ')' in the function could be replaced by a
> character not occurring in the text data.

no that is inserting regexp grouping syntax, not just a placeholder character.


> Since we're also processing just ASCII text, and not Unicode, I replaced
> the hex codes in the translation with just a space for each special
> character.

That won't work you need to use a different character for each
regexp-special character (any characters not in the data would do, but
they need to be distinct, otherwise you will find that a string of
"++++" is considered equal to a string "[[[[" as you have made them both
a string of spaces before starting the comparison.

David

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