On 2013-11-07 18:23, Brian Barker wrote:
At 16:55 07/11/2013 +1300, Steve Edmonds wrote:
I am trying to find and replace some text with regex in calc. Can
anyone help with how I make it non-greedy.
I think the answer is that you don't: you must find a way of
constructing a suitable expression despite such expressions being greedy.
I tried \([:digit:].*?[:digit:]\) in place of
\([:digit:].*[:digit:]\) but both are greedy. When the following
(12-34-23) cat (233) is in a selected cell it replaces both instances
between ().
By the way, I don't understand your ".*?" - do you perhaps mean either
".*" or ".?" ?
I'm afraid you've fallen into the common trap of attempting to define
your problem by quoting only expressions that *don't* work! Which
parenthesised string do you want to match? I'm guessing the first.
But what exactly are the characteristics of the strings you want to
match? And the ones you want not to match?
Is the target string always at the beginning? Try:
\<\([^\)]*\)
Is the target string always digits-hyphen-digits-hyphen-digits? Try:
\([:digit:]+-[:digit:]+-[:digit:]+\)
or:
\(\d+-\d+-\d+\)
Do you want to match the second string instead? Try:
\([:digit:]+\)
or:
\(\d+\)
Depending on exactly what you want to match and to avoid matching, you
may have to do something different.
I trust this helps.
Brian Barker
Thanks for the replies.
Sorry I am not that clear now I read it again. In non-LO regex I would
use the following (ignoring the quotes)
\(\d.*\d\) to find "(12-34-23) cat (239)" in a string (12-34-23) cat
(233) the .* is greedy and gobbles everything between the (1 and 9). the
? after the .*, i.e. .*? would be non-gready and would match (12-34-23)
and (239) without including the cat. In LO you use [:digit:] in place of \d.
Urmas, if you have "(12-34-23) cat (239)" in a cell in calc and search
for \([:digit:].*?[:digit:]\) and replace with ww are you saying you get
"ww cat ww" in the cell, ignoring "", i.e. 2 substitutions.
Steve
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