Re: [libreoffice-users] regex help

At 07:29 04/01/2021 -0500, Bill Drescher wrote:
> On 1/3/2021 4:09 PM, Brian Barker wrote:
> > At 14:19 03/01/2021 -0500, Bill Drescher wrote:
> > > I have a script that mysteriously became double spaced. I want to 
> > > search for 2 end of paragraph marks and replace them with one.
> >
> > So it's the paragraphs that are spaced, not lines (the usual 
> > meaning of "double-spaced")?
>
> Yes, I do mean lines are double spaced, but...

If the lines of a paragraph really are double-spaced, you need to go 
to the paragraph or paragraph style formatting and change "Line 
spacing" from Double back to Single. Problem solved. In that case, 
you would not be - as you suggested - looking for anything to search 
for. If that is not your solution, you don't have double spacing and 
it would help you to understand what you do have (and indeed to 
explain your problem on the list) by using the appropriate terms. 
Remember that the concept of "lines" as you appear to be using it 
went out with lined manuscript paper or typewriters.

> I can't do what I want to do in my programming editor and when I 
> read the script into LO the line endings are suppressed and each 
> line is treated as a paragraph.

If each line is a separate paragraph but they are still spaced too 
much, either you have empty paragraphs (not "lines") between your 
real paragraphs or you have paragraph spacing (in paragraph or 
paragraph style formatting) that you don't want. Remove paragraph 
spacing there.

> > > I don't want to remove all blank lines, just the ones that have a 
> > > blank line following.
> >
> > In other words you want to remove blank empty *paragraphs*.
>
> Yes, but I have intentional blank lines that I do not want to remove.

The only "blank lines" are created if you have consecutive *line 
breaks* between text. Is that really what you have?

Oh, and if you are describing the so-called "blank lines" you want to 
remove the same way as the "blank lines" you want to preserve, how 
are we to know - indeed, how is LibreOffice to know - which is which? 
There has to be a specified difference if either a machine or an 
earnest human can distinguish them.

> Is there a way to select a paragraph followed by an empty paragraph?

I'm not sure there is. But how would that help you?

Here's a thought. (I'm guessing.) Do you actually have text that 
should run on within paragraphs but has somehow become separated such 
that each line of any paragraph has become a separate paragraph? If 
so, you may be able to reassemble paragraphs using AutoCorrect with 
"Combine single line paragraphs if length greater than ..." to a 
suitably small value.

Should you be sending a sample document to someone (or to the list if 
it would be accepted) for diagnosis?

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


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