Is there a RegEx Pal string we can use to find all \pn or \nd inside of a \ft

Question

We have a user who has inserted a lot of \pn and some \nd inside of footnotes. We now know we need those to be +pn…*pn* and +nd…+nd* when they are in a footnote.

We’ve found that we can get sort of close by finding \ft( .?)\pn(.?)\pn* with RegEx Pal but it produces false positives.

Is there a way to confine the search to inside of a single footnote?
Thank you,
MSEAIT/LT

Answer 1

How about using the RegEx Pal feature of searching within, i.e.
\\f .+?\\f\*:::\\pn
The syntax of .+? limits the scope to a single footnote, and within Regex Pal, the ::: tells it to only search within that single footnote

Comments

That works perfectly. Thank you.

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So where did you folks learn about the (context):::(string to find) syntax? I can’t find it in any of the RegEx Pal help. It seems like that’s a very useful thing that should be mentioned in the help! Are there other little gems out there that we should know about?

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Hi jeffh

There is no documentation on it. Those of us who know about it probably were informed directly by Nathan Miles.

I put together a “cheat sheet” about regular expressions in the Pratext/Regexpal context. The “sheet” is now up to 4 pages. The bottom of page 3 shows:

kffljopcdmhhpnhh.png1398×245 23.8 KB

Note that the ::: context match is not a true regular expression but a capability built in RegExPal itself.

I have attached the PDF of the sheet.

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I’ll try to attach the PDF again.

Answer 2

Is there a way to use that search string in a find\replace scenario to replace the \pn with +pn?
The closest I could come up with is

Find: \f(.+?)\pn(.?)\pn*(.?)\f*:::
Replace: \f\1\+pn\2\+pn*\3\f*

I think that would work but it would take multiple passes and I’m not sure I’d trust it enough for Yes to All

Comments

The following should do the trick:
Find: \\f .+?\\f\*:::(\\pn)
Replace: \\+pn
It replaces the start and end markers in one go.

Please be very careful with using .*? or .+?. Your proposed regex would find:
\f [footnote without \pn]\f* [some text] \pn, i.e. it would replace a \pn outside of a footnote.
I’m sorry that I don’t know how to describe this better: \\f .*?\\f\* is okay, \\f (.+?)\\pn most likely does not what you want. Here you can find a more thorough explanation.

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Thank you, that’s exactly what we are after.

MSEAIT/LT

Answer 3

This forum only allowed zip files and images to be attached. That might be why your PDF was not showing up. I have changed the board settings to also allow PDF files to be attached, so it will hopefully work if you try again.

Answer 4

Yes, please do try to attach the PDF again… I’m looking forward to seeing it!

Comments

Did the PDF get thru?

Answer 5

RegEx Cheat Sheet v12 for Paratext.pdf (383.0 KB)

anon467281 - I’ve uploaded the cheatsheet pdf.

Comments

Where is it uploaded to? Is that something I can do?

When I click on the link you gave it does a download that I can then view. Is that what you meant by uploaded?

Answer 6

Yes, you “attach” a pdf file to one of these messages by using the “upload” icon. That provides a link which then allows the reader to download the “attached” file.

Answer 7

I got the PDF that anon848905 uploaded. Thank you!

Answer 8

Came to this late: here is my solution:
(?<=\\(f|ef|fe|wj))([^\\]|\\(?!(f|ef|fe|wj)\s))*?(?=\\\1\*):::\\([^f+]\w*[\s\*])
\\+\1
This adds + to tags in \f …\f*, \ef …\ef*, \fe …\fe* or \wj …\wj* that do not begin with f
For userMenu.txt
Fix embedded markers#r#(?<=\\(f|ef|fe|wj))([^\\]|\\(?!(f|ef|fe|wj)\s))*?(?=\\\1\*):::\\([^f+]\w*[\s\*])#\\+\1

Comments

Thank you so much for your solution.

It worked well. However, there seems to be a bug somewhere in RegExPal. When I step through the replacement one location at a time, every once in a while it is not a marker that is highlighted, but a string in the body-text. If I then choose ‘No’ to the replacement, I find that the next replacement is a final maker (\pn*) and the preceding initial marker was not replaced. If I choose ‘Yes’ the correct string a few verses further down seems to have been replaced and the next string to be replaced is the final marker. So it seems that RegExPal is not highlighting the string to be replaced correctly at times. When it is wrong the windows are initially also not showing the highlighted string. The one time when I checked, the windows shows the last few lines in the chapter.

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@anon015155 You are experiencing a bug in RegEx Pal. For some reason Find and Replace do not always highlight the correct text in the Find and Replace panes. Here are a few tips and workarounds:
In Find :

• Click Next enough times to get to the next chapter, and then Previous. Often the correct text is now highlighted.

In Replace:

• Look carefully at the bottom pane for the text that you expect to be changed. You will likely see that the text has been correctly changed, although incorrectly highlighted. Go ahead and click Yes.
• Click Cancel and then do Replace again. Often the second time through the correct text is highlighted.
• Do Extract first to review all of the places that the Find string matches. If every thing is OK do Replace First>YesTo All