Use non-greedy quantifiers. Instead of <td[^>]*> Use <td.*?>
You can also cluster characters by using the positional assertion (?:...) -in your case, (?:(</td>)) BBEdit's Help topic "Searching with GREP" has an in-depth discussion or GREP. I've found that reading the help with a file open and finding things using the different patterns discussed is most salutary... But since you're in a hurry, Use: (<td.*?>)(.+)(?:</td>) .*? will find everything up to the closing angle bracket of the opening tag (?:</td>) will find the literal string </td> -instead of capturing, just use </td>, not \3 Dennis Cox On 10/31/08 9:31 AM, "Govinda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi all > > I am writing to ask for a little help understanding grep searches. I > have been using them in a light-weight fashion for years, but I need > to deepen my abilities here to save more time while coding... > > specifically, now, I don't understand how to find "not some word". > Say I want to find all the <td>'s (including their contents and > closing tags) in a selection (or just one after another), so that I > can change the contents of the <td> to be wrapped in <b> tags or some > deeper-level cgi tags, etc, (whatever).... and so I write a grep like > this: > (<td[^>]*>)([^<]+)(<\/td>) > (replace will be something like: > \1\[cgiTag\]\2\[\/cgiTag\]\3 > > Now here's where I need to learn more: The above works whenever the > inner contents of the <td> do not already have any "<" chars. But > what if they do? My character class #2 now effectively says: > "anything except a '<' char". But what I really want is for character > class #2 to effectively say: "anything except the literal string '</ > td>'". I know how to find literal strings and also how to find NOT > certain characters (*individually*), but I don't know how to find NOT > an exact sequence of chars. I have been through the docs and fiddled > with efforts as deep as my brain could wrap around it all in between > real-world work/deadlines, so now I am asking in friendly English for > friendly English help. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BBEdit Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/bbedit?hl=en If you have a specific feature request or would like to report a suspected (or confirmed) problem with the software, please email to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" rather than posting to the group. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
