Re: [libreoffice-users] Find and replace - regular expressions

At 08:24 28/10/2013 +0100, Miroslaw Zalewski wrote:
> Dnia 2013-10-28, o godz. 00:24:38 Brian Barker napisal(a):
> > That's because your original question was not at all clear!  (You 
> > owe it to correspondents not to waste their time.)
>
> I disagree. The question was perfectly clear.

Thanks for this - but I'm afraid not.  The original question was 
"Does the Find & Replace dialog box allow backreferences in the 
'Replace with' field? (I'm having trouble getting it to 
work.)".  No-one was able to answer it until the original questioner 
explained himself.  Were you perhaps instead reading his revised message?

> "Backreference" is one of basic terms in regular expressions theory. 
> If you ask about regexpes, you may safely assume that your peers 
> knows what "backreference" means.

You've latched onto "backreference" as if not understanding that was 
the substance of my comment.  But I didn't mention that.  Instead, 
the problem was that the questioner initially did not explain what 
problem he had with backreferences.  Indeed, it transpired that his 
problem was that he didn't need backreferences at 
all.  Backreferences are how you refer back to a matched string 
within the pattern itself, not how you refer to the same thing in the 
replacement string.  (See Wikipedia: "grouping subexpressions with 
parentheses and recalling the value they match *in the same 
expression* (backreferences)" (my emphasis).)  The user's problem was 
that he was erroneously using the syntax for backreferences in an 
attempt to create a reference in the replacement string.

> Statement in parentheses applies to both sides - the one asking the 
> question as well as people who answer it.

Well, that's certainly true.  But I cannot see how you can suggest 
(as you clearly were) that I was wasting the questioner's time.  Once 
he identified his problem, I provided an explanation which he 
described as "Perfect".

Brian Barker


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