Re: RFE: Regular expression scan AND replace

Yep Craig - I see your point - I also see how things work in TextPad, for example, and there the standard \1 for back reference is used in both.

And don't get me started on this stuff in MS Word!!

Actually I think I was led down your path when looking at the help - help for search string and for replacement string take me to completely different places, different "standards", maybe, for all this.

I have a wish that applications using REGEX would use the same syntax throughout. Of course, as my boss said the other day, "If I had a million dollars, I'd not be sitting here and working!"

Regards
Vern

On 4/15/2016 3:23 AM, Craig Richards wrote:

Vern,

with regard to your comment:

So the marker for back reference is different for search text and for

replacement text - backslash for search, dollar-sign for replacement

My take on it would be that in the SEARCH string you are still within the
regular expression and so the standard \1 for back reference is what you
use.
However in the REPLACEMENT string, your data is in separate field in the
editor and therefore it is referenced via a host variable which some
languages reference via $1

Well, that's how I understand it :-)
Craig

On 14 April 2016 at 22:12, Vernon Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have used back-references in the replacement text - $1 gets you the
first 1 - just tried in the search text.

This search text -

(r)[^r]+\1

got me strings that start with R and end with R and have at least 1 non-R
in between. Case-insensitive in this case - heh!

So the marker for back reference is different for search text and for
replacement text - backslash for search, dollar-sign for replacement

How crazy is that!

Vern


At least I THINK that is the syntax.

On 4/14/2016 3:32 PM, Buck Calabro wrote:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/execute?use_case=viewRfe&CR_ID=86909

I just finished using Notepad++ to do a regular expression scan and
replace. Again. I wonder if I'm an outlier in the RDi community, or if
others miss the ability to use back references in a regular expression?

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