Regex replacement matching not working

[Ed Lyons]

The app finds my character-styled spans correctly but ignores \&   $&   $MATCH  and so forth. It inserts them as literals instead of replacing with the entire match. Yes, I selected regex in the Find dropdown.

Windows 11. v2.04

[walt.farrell]

Publisher uses the Boost reg-ex library. You can find the full reference at the Boost.org site, or try regular-expression.info and select Boost as the variant for the syntax descriptions. 

\& is not Boost syntax for what you're trying to do. You might try \0 or $0. (I'm away from my computer and can't check right now.) 

 

[Ed Lyons]

0 syntax didn't work.

From the help file -- "Affinity Publisher supports Perl and ECMAScript (with perl extensions) expressions. Regular expressions use the "C" or "POSIX" locale, while Locale Aware Regular Expressions use the locale inferred from the text being searched and locale aware collation is implied."

I am a programmer and familiar with using regex. Used it successful in afpub 1.x. 

Followed syntax on "including www.regular-expressions.info and regexone.com."

[Ed Lyons]

BTW. I left the Find box blank and I put in .*

Find results were the same. Replace still did literal, not regex.

[Callum]

Hi Ed Lyons,

Please could you provide a sample document demonstrating this issue? Just to clarify this REGEX worked correctly in V1 but not in V2?

Thanks
C

[Ed Lyons]

My particular file started in 2.0. I was referring to similar regex operations in 1.0. 

You can verify the issue with the following steps.

Start a new file. Paste a bunch of text. Format random spans with a character style, e.g. strong. Check regular expressions in Find dropdown and search for Strong. All of them appear in the results list. Now try to bracket each occurrence with [\&] or [$&] or [$0]. Fail.

[walt.farrell]

On 2/21/2023 at 12:39 PM, Ed Lyons said:

Start a new file. Paste a bunch of text. Format random spans with a character style, e.g. strong. Check regular expressions in Find dropdown and search for Strong. All of them appear in the results list. Now try to bracket each occurrence with [\&] or [$&] or [$0]. Fail.

What search string did you use? If you supply only a character style, and no actual regular expression, then I don't think there's a group for the referback (\&, $&, $0) to refer to.

But having said that, there are errors in doing find/replace using .* as the search string, and I can't get any replaces to work in V1 (1.10.6) if I use .* and specify a character style. The Find works properly, but no Replaces work for me (even trying to replace with a fixed string like aaa for example).

This seems to be true in 2.1.0.1709 Beta, too.

Switching the Search string to \w* allows the Find to work, and then a replacement with [$0] or [$&] works, in both V1 and in 2.1 Beta.

Using \& in the Replace field, though, just gives a literal & which I think is correct for Boost RegEx processing, with the options that I think Publisher is using.

 

[Ed Lyons]

Match All should not need a referback?!!

I tried both .* and only a character style and like you did not achieve success.

You keep referring to Boost. Researching that, I see it claims Perl support, which makes sense with the help file statement. I am mentioning this because if Boost provides more or less support then maybe the help file needs to be updated to reflect that with better syntax sources?

Your \w* workaround is giving me weird results, ie. duplicate replacement strings before and after and in between. It's trying hard!!   

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, Ed Lyons said:

Your \w* workaround is giving me weird results, ie. duplicate replacement strings before and after and in between.

I'm not seeing that, and would need more details.