I have an emacs buffer containing the text
a1b2c3
using the regexp-builder, i create the regexp
"b\\(2\\)"
and can see the match highlighting (b2, with the 2 in a different colour).
however, when i paste the expression into replace-regexp, i get 0 matches. both with and without the quotes. to get a match i need to use
b\(2\)
i guess there's some escaping going on here, but surely i must be doing something wrong. having to manually escape seems to defeat half the point.