In PCRE2, the capability to perform conditional replacements directly
within the replacement pattern syntax isn't directly supported.
You could do it with a scripting language (Perl, Python, PHP, JavaScript,
etc.) that supports replacement callbacks.
You will not be able to do it by a single BBEdit find/replace.
But ..., if you want to stick to BBEdit and it's rich set of options, you
could use a Canonize file and uses multiple regular expressions to do it.
Here is an example of Canonize file (beware that the *__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__
*placeholders
are to be replaced by *real TABs* in the following snippet because the
forum html won't preserve them):
# -*- x-bbedit-canon-case-sensitive: 0; x-bbedit-canon-match-words: 0;
x-bbedit-canon-grep: 1; -*-
# End:
# Local Variables:
# coding: utf-8
# indent_style: tab
#===
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
(<a[^>]*>([^<\h]*?))\h__REPLACE_WITH_TAB__\1\
If your anchors' text have with more than 20 whitespaces, keep adding
occurrences of the regular expression to the Canonize file or run the
canonize multiple times.
HTH
Jean Jourdain
On Wednesday, June 26, 2024 at 7:15:00 PM UTC+2 [email protected] wrote:
> Another problem with this pattern is that it will replace other spaces on
> a line that contains an anchor tag and other tags. You can add a quote to
> the first assertion but it's still going to have some spaces it encodes
> that it doesn't need to.
>
> [fletcher]
>
> On Jun 26, 2024, at 9:58 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>
> There's probably a more clever way to do this but this pattern works with
> multiple passes. Each Replace All will replace one space per link.
> Eventually it should have a pass where it doesn't replace anything.
>
> Find: (?<=>)(.*?) (.*?)(?=</a>)
> Replace: \1\ \2
>
> It uses a look behind and a look ahead assertion to find the text between
> > and </a> and then replaces the first space inside.
>
> [fletcher]
>
> On Jun 26, 2024, at 9:24 AM, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Longtime fan, first time caller. BBEdit's the best.
>
> I know my way around BBEdit grep searches pretty well, and yet I'm finding
> myself stumped on what seems like it should be a pretty simple thing.
>
> I've got a bunch of lines that contain hyperlinks to song titles. In
> simplified form, they look like this:
>
> <a href='index.html#All Day Long'>All Day Long</a>
> <a href='index.html#Chosen Time'>Chosen Time</a>
> <a href='index.html#Sooner Than You Think'>Sooner Than You Think</a>
>
> I chose these specific examples because they have a variable number of
> spaces within the song names. What I want to do is replace the spaces in
> the *displayed* text (that is, between the ">" and the "<") with " "
> but I want to *not* do the same to the spaces within the href= portion
> of the <a tag.
>
> I can search with something like:
> >.*?</a>
> and that will match only the portion I want to change.
>
> Or if it helped, I could chunk the whole line into subpatterns, like:
> ^(<a.*?)(#.*?>)(.*?)(</a>)
> which would then put what I want to change in \3.
>
> But in either case, what would I put in the Replace field that would allow
> me to replace only the spaces with something else (" " in this case)?
> Or, is there some strategy for breaking it up into multiple finds that
> would get the job done? I've really racked my brain for a while on this and
> I feel like I must be staring at it but not seeing it.
>
> Thanks for any ideas!
>
> Ivan.
>
>
>
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