Find and replace (suggestions for improvement)

[Guest]

Find and replace with regular expressions

• Ability to save regular expressions with names (with all settings, i.e. replace field, paragraph styles, etc.). Without this option, working with it hardly makes sense. When I check a longer text I first run through about 30 different regular expressions. It's a lot of work when I have to type them into the search field and the replace field by hand every time.
• You should be able to see whether paragraph styles, character styles, etc. have been set.
• \n not working. \n should only find line breaks.

Find and replace in general

• Show number of hits.
• "Replace" button, which only replaces, but does not look for the next hit. Often you want to check the first replacement.
• "Replace and Find" button, that is, what Replace is currently doing.
• "Search backwards" button.
• After replacing, gray out the entry in the list - or delete it completely.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, raddadist said:

\n not working. \n should only find line breaks.

In my experience, other regex engines that allow paragraphs work like Publisher does. Thus, /n does work, but all regex engines have some semantics that the user needs to learn and accomodate.

You can insert a Line Break from the pull-down in the Find field, even in a regex.

Other than that, good ideas. Thanks.

[Guest]

I had seen that line breaks can be found in the pull down. It works.
Just wanted to point out that \r and \n should have different meanings in regular expressions.

I know it like this: \r finds paragraph breaks and \n finds line breaks.

Publisher makes no difference between \r and \n.
In both cases Publisher only finds paragraph breaks.

[Old Bruce]

 Publisher uses 2029 and 2028 unicode for Paragraph and Line breaks..

[Guest]

That's right.
\x{2028} for line break and \x{2029} for paragraph break work.

\r and \n may not be used in the same way in all programs.
But I would find the distinction very useful – as it is made in InDesign.
\r and \n could make the regular expressions shorter and easier to read.

[garrettm30]

5 hours ago, raddadist said:

Just wanted to point out that \r and \n should have different meanings in regular expressions.

I know it like this: \r finds paragraph breaks and \n finds line breaks.

 

I agree. There may be other programs that are like Publisher in this respect, but it is the first implementation of regex I have experienced that treats \r and \n as though they were identical. My favorite regex builder site (regex101.com) lists them as two separate meanings in the reference section:

[uneMule]

Bonsoir @all

This allows expressions to be copied or saved and ported to other environments.
The attached capture is a search for a column break (empty picto!?)
In the text block, copy/paste of searched character. Amusing, no?

That said, it is a very interesting tool.

oops. I realised I had put the character in replace. Obviously, it's in search. But the result is the same.