phdesigner: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- if I search for [ ]*(?=[ ]) in PSPad's normal search it says there's an error in the search expression, however if I search for it with phReplace I find mathces but some of the matches will have 0 length. I'm not sure what to do with that. I expected this search to find a space with any trailing spaces (I know there are better ways to do this, but it's a good example for this 0 length problem)
I'm guessing PSPad first vaildates the search, I don't think vb offers any support for validating it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi, thanks for taking backreferences into account. - I think, the reason your expression don't work in PSPad's built in search is simply because it doesn't support these advanced features at all. I allready noticed this limitation - - this is called "positive lookahead" see my favourite ressource http://www.regular-expressions.info/lookaround.html (i noticed that your script supports also the negative lookahead, but it doesn't support the Lookbehind constructions - here I get a run-time error 5017 application-defined or object-defined error; but after closing a dialog with the upper right cross (not Close) other searches work ok; I think this is enough to see an error; the validator would probably complicate the code a bit) your expression [ ]*(?=[ ]) should match zero or more spaces only if it is/they are followed by a space. the lookahead expression (?=[ ]) isn't part of the match it is only used as a condition if the preceeding part should match. As [ ]* can be zero width, the same is true for the whole expression. (if you have a single space in the source text, the "zero times space" is matched and the space itself is taken as necessary condition for this match) [ ]* - alone would also match each zero width "nothing" between all characters What specifically should be matched in this case? "a space with any trailing spaces" " +" (without quotes) would match one or more spaces (the [] aren't necessary as there is only one character). -- <http://forum.pspad.com/read.php?2,34061,38044> PSPad freeware editor http://www.pspad.com
