Re: [libreoffice-users] using \t in regular expression replace

At 11:08 07/10/2012 +0200, Johnny Rosenberg wrote:
> 2012/10/7 Brian Barker:
> > At 20:24 06/10/2012 -0400, Dan Lewis wrote:
> > >  On 10/06/2012 05:09 PM, Cor Nouws wrote:
> > > > I was trying to use \t to replace e.g a paragraph ending with a 
> > > > tab. So find $ replace with \t  That does not work.
> > >
> > > At first I did not understand what you meant since paragraphs 
> > > always end with paragraph breaks.
> >
> > The questioner presumably wants to merge existing paragraphs: 
> > removing paragraph breaks and replacing them by tab characters.
> >
> > > Here is what I was able to do:  In the search box, I entered .$ 
> > > (period followed by the dollar sign). This searches paragraphs 
> > > that end with a period.
> >
> > Sorry, but that's not so.  If "Regular expressions" is not ticked, 
> > then .$ matches exactly that: a dot followed by a dollar sign - 
> > nothing about paragraph breaks.  If "Regular expressions" is 
> > ticked, then .$ matches any single character but only if it occurs 
> > at the end of a paragraph.  But note in this latter case that the 
> > expression matches only that single character, without including 
> > the paragraph break itself.  So any replacement replaces the single 
> > character but leaves the paragraph break as it was.
> >
> > The $ sign anchors any search to the end of a paragraph, but does 
> > not match the paragraph break itself, which - in the view of 
> > LibreOffice's regular expressions - does not exist as a separate 
> > entity.  There is no simple way to match and replace paragraph 
> > breaks, I think.  (You can match and replace Shift+Enter line 
> > breaks - using \n.)
>
> The problem I encountered was that the paragraph breaks was replaced 
> with the characters "\t", not the [tab] (tab) character, no matter 
> if "Regular expressions" were ticked or not. I got the same result 
> when trying to replace with \x09: The paragraph breaks were replaced 
> with the characters "\x09", not the [tab] character.
>
> But maybe that's only me, I am not the OP, so feel free to ignore this.

Weirdly that's true: if you search for $ on its own, you can replace 
the paragraph breaks with something else.  The problem is then only 
that "\t" in the "Replace with" box is interpreted as text instead of 
a regular expression.  (Surely that's wrong?)  But you've found the 
solution.  (I spotted this part but didn't latch on to its significance.)

With "Regular expressions" ticked, first search for $ and replace 
with a character or string that does not occur in your document - 
perhaps a hash mark?  Then repeat the search (still with "Regular 
expressions" ticked), this time searching for # and replacing with \t.

Sorry for previous distraction.  I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


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