Re: [libreoffice-users] Find/Replace Regex

At 19:55 07/11/2013 +1300, Steve Edmonds wrote:
> On 2013-11-07 18:23, Brian Barker wrote:
> > At 16:55 07/11/2013 +1300, Steve Edmonds wrote:
> > > I am trying to find and replace some text with regex in calc. Can 
> > > anyone help with how I make it non-greedy.
> >
> > I think the answer is that you don't: you must find a way of 
> > constructing a suitable expression despite such expressions being greedy.
> >
> > > I tried \([:digit:].*?[:digit:]\) in place of 
> > > \([:digit:].*[:digit:]\) but both are greedy. When the following 
> > > (12-34-23) cat (233) is in a selected cell it replaces both 
> > > instances between ().
> >
> > By the way, I don't understand your ".*?" - do you perhaps mean 
> > either ".*" or ".?" ?
> >
> > I'm afraid you've fallen into the common trap of attempting to 
> > define your problem by quoting only expressions that *don't* 
> > work!  Which parenthesised string do you want to match?  I'm 
> > guessing the first.
> > But what exactly are the characteristics of the strings you want to 
> > match?  And the ones you want not to match?
> >
> > Is the target string always at the beginning?  Try:
> > \<\([^\)]*\)
> >
> > Is the target string always digits-hyphen-digits-hyphen-digits? Try:
> > \([:digit:]+-[:digit:]+-[:digit:]+\)
> > or:
> > \(\d+-\d+-\d+\)
> >
> > Do you want to match the second string instead? Try:
> > \([:digit:]+\)
> > or:
> > \(\d+\)
> >
> > Depending on exactly what you want to match and to avoid matching, 
> > you may have to do something different.
>
> Sorry I am not that clear now I read it again. In non-LO regex I 
> would use the following (ignoring the quotes)
> \(\d.*\d\) to find "(12-34-23) cat (239)"

You are now saying you want to match the entire string - but I 
suspect you don't mean that.

> ... in a string (12-34-23) cat (233) the .* is greedy and gobbles 
> everything between the (1 and 9). the ? after the .*, i.e. .*? would 
> be non-greedy and would match (12-34-23) and (239) without including the cat.

So you actually want to match *both* parenthesised strings but not 
whatever else there is?  Is that no matter what is in the 
parentheses?  This is still not a defined problem.

> In LO you use [:digit:] in place of \d.

No: you can now use \d as well.

If the parentheses can contain anything (except parentheses), try:
\([^\)]*\)

This will need two finds to find two parenthesised strings, but if 
you are using Replace All that won't matter.

Brian Barker


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