Can’t save my regexes to the User menu

Question

Continuing the discussion from Expressions for RegEx Pal:

Expressions for RegEx Pal

I’ve had problems adding my own expressions: it seems that you’re allowed to add a search/replace pair of expressions, but when I did this a while back, the replace expression got munged.

This is still happening. If I enter:

… and save it, it doesn’t work. I saved twice, then thought that maybe I had to actually use the Replace first, so I did that and saved again. The lines in userMenu.txt are:

test 2016je16#r#знд
test 2016je16-1#r#знд
test 2016je16-2#r#знд

BTW, “знд” was a Find that I had done not long before.

Answer 1

Looking at the code, it looks like it won’t work correctly unless it actually finds something to replace.

I’ve written it up so it should be fixed “soon” (hopefully in 7.6).

Comments

[Edited.]

I chose a replacement for which the find text really exists in the text:

… and saved it. It still saves as a Find, not a Replace, and with a previous Find string:

Replace in \vp en dash → em dash#f#\\vp [\d–]+\s*\\vp\*

(That string was from when I was testing my Find regex with Pal set to Find, not Replace.)

I did another test where I actually did a Replace ⇒ Yes to All, then saved, but with exactly the same result.

I think I’ll stop obsessing over it now, and wait till it’s fixed …

… but I’m intrigued: how did you, @anon291708, add your regexes to the list? Or did you just type up the file manually?

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It used to work quite some time ago. Not sure what has happened to cause
it to always fail. Knowing this I go ahead and

• create the find/replace in /RegExPal/
• add it to the usermenu
• copy the replace expression from /RegExPal/
• edit the usermenu.txt file
• go to the bottom of the file where the new menu item has been added
• add the # at the end of the line
• paste the copied replace expression after that just added #
• change the #f# earlier in the line to #r#.

Just note that any changes to the menu outside of /RegExPal/ are not
reflected immediately. You need to close and then reopen /RegExPal/.

D anon467281

Global Publishing Services
Scripture Typesetting trainer & Regular Expression "specialist"
Dallas, TX

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Thanks. [Padding to make post more than 20 chars.]

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wdavidhj:

… but I’m intrigued: how did you, @anon291708, add your regexes to the list? Or did you just type up the file manually?

I just took a quick look at the code to see what was probably happening. And for me, it does save it correctly after clicking on find and it finds something. I’m not sure why it’s not working for you.

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I’m doing a replace and the replace does not get captured. Is there a
way to let adding to the menu know that you are adding a replace? Or am
I missing something?

D anon467281

Global Publishing Services
Scripture Typesetting trainer & Regular Expression "specialist"
Dallas, TX

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anon467281:

I’m doing a replace and the replace does not get captured. Is there a
way to let adding to the menu know that you are adding a replace?

Sorry if I wasn’t clear, this is what I was talking about. If you click on First (I incorrectly said “Find”) and it actually finds something, that seems to be the trigger to let it be properly saved (at least for me).

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I did the replace and selected first to match on the first find to
replace. When I add to menu I do get the #csd# followed by the find.
However, the # followed by the replace is not included.

This is my add to menu entry#csd#(\d+[.:][\dabc]+(,
?)?[\dabc])\s[\p{Pd}]+\s*(\d+[.:]\d)

should have been

This is my add to menu entry#csd#(\d+[.:][\dabc]+(,
?)?[\dabc])\s[\p{Pd}]+\s*(\d+[.:]\d)#\1\u2013\3

D anon467281

Global Publishing Services
Scripture Typesetting trainer & Regular Expression "specialist"
Dallas, TX

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So each of us three sees different behaviour! I was also clicking Find in my later tests above.