Two comments about the suggested pattern
(.{1,}\n){5}
First, the sub-pattern “.{1,}” could also be written as “.+”. The + suffix
means exactly the same thing as the {1,} suffix, that is, “one or more
occurrences of the preceding pattern”. It is a personal choice which one you
prefer. (I believe that the specific suffixes + (1 or more), * (0 or more), and
? (0 or 1) were part of the GREP pattern language before the more general {m,n}
(at least m but no more than n).)
Second, if you have more than five consecutive non-blank lines, the suggested
pattern will match the first five. If you only want to match groups of exactly
five non-blank lines, I would suggest something like this:
(?<=\n\n|\A)(.{1,}\n){5}$
The (?<=\n\n|\A) prefix says that the following pattern will only match if it
is preceded by (the ?<= operator) either a blank line (the \n\n — i.e., two
end-of-lines with nothing between) or (the.| operator) the beginning of the
document (the \A). Therefore, five consecutive non-blank lines will not match
the pattern if they are preceded by another non-blank line.
Similarly, the $ suffix says that the pattern must be followed by either
another end-of-line (i.e., an empty line) or the end of the document.
Therefore, five consecutive non-blank lines will not match the pattern if they
are followed by another non-blank line.
> On Jul 29, 2024, at 9:02 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>
> You can use the repetition modifier on a parentheses group to find a pattern
> that repeats so many times.
>
> This will find five repetitions of a line that starts with an alphanumeric
> character.
>
> (\w.*?\n){5}
>
> You can use non-grouping parentheses (:? ... ) if you need to do
> search/replaces with this.
>
> [fletcher]
>
>> On Jul 29, 2024, at 3:11 AM, Otto Munters <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi BB friends
>>
>> How can I find text blocks consisting of 5 lines?
>> Example:
>> line 1
>> line 2
>> line 3
>> line 4
>>
>> line 5
>> line 6
>> line 7
>> line 8
>> line 9
>>
>> I then want to find the second block of text.
>>
>> thanks for your help!
>> Otto
>>
>>
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