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• • June 9, 2013 at 3:20 am #33853
    jerugal

    Member

    I need to change the character style of any amount of words..as long as it ends with “:” a collin

    I tried doing
    ([\u]+:)
    but that only gives me 1 word attached to the collin

    then I tried:
    ([\u]+ [\u]+:)

    but again that only gives me 2 words nearest to the collin

    any ideas on how to get ” any word in the paragraph before a collin” ?

    THANKS!!!

  • June 9, 2013 at 6:44 am #33855
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    If you are trying to apply the character style from the beginning of the paragraph up to (or including) the colon, I would suggest using a nested style rather than a grep style. (Nested styles are much easier anyway.)

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• • October 6, 2010 at 3:14 pm #57263
    skemp

    Member

    Hi all,

    Can any one help with a GREP expression to find an entire paragraph which has been keyed in all uppercase characters?

    I have been trying with negative lookbehinds/lookaheads for lowercase letters but don't quite get it right.

    I can get the lookahead bit right…

    u(?!.*l)

    this is all lowercase

    THIS IS ALL CAPS

    but…

    a THIS IS ALL CAPS only applies the formatting (underline) to the text following the lowercase letter.

    A similar negative lookbehind for any lowercase letter

    (?<!.*l.*)u(?!.*l)

    removes all the formatting!

    Any ideas anyone.

    Thanks

    Simon.

  • October 7, 2010 at 2:24 am #57267
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    How about something like this

    (u+L)[^ ]L+(?=r)

    That will find

    THIS IS AN ENTIRE PARAGRAPH KEYED IN UPPERCASE.

    But it won't find

    THIS IS not An ENTIRE paragraph KEYED in UPPERcase.

  • October 7, 2010 at 2:26 am #57268
    skemp

    Member

    Thanks Eugene,

    How do you get the backslash characters to show in these posts?

  • October 7, 2010 at 2:37 am #57269
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    You need to do them x2

    When I type the backslash here I am actually typing it twice but it's only showing up once “”

    Here's another GREP to find the same thing

    ([A-Z]+)[^ ]+[^a-z]+(?=r)

  • October 7, 2010 at 2:51 am #57270
    skemp

    Member

    Hi Eugene,

    Your two greps are almost there, unfortunately lowercase letters at the beginning of the paragraph are ignored. I got this far too.

    However:

    ^[^l]+$

    Does work.

    Credit for this should go to Peter Kharel, his example on the Adobe InDesign Forum showed how to find paragraph without parenthesis ( or ). I simply adapted it for lowercase letters (l).

    Simon.

  • October 7, 2010 at 3:12 am #57271
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I'd need some samples of the text to work out exactly what you need.

    From what I understood you wanted to select an entire paragraph of uppercase letters.

    Glad you found a solution though :)

    GREP can be tricky

  • October 7, 2010 at 3:39 am #57272
    skemp

    Member

    Yes, I wanted to find a paragraph of uppercase letters.

    I will eventually be using this in a Find Change but set up a Grep Style for testing purposes as you can instantly see what's happening.

    This is why I said “lowercase letters at the beginning of the paragraph are ignored”, they weren't having the character style (red text) applied.

    Thanks.

    Simon.

  • October 7, 2010 at 3:50 am #57273
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I'm not really following that at all?

    I'd need to specific examples of the text and what you expect to find or not find.

  • October 7, 2010 at 4:26 am #57274
    skemp

    Member

    Sorry Eugene, I am making this seem more complicated than it is.

    I am using a Grep Find/Change operation to locate paragraphs typed entirely in all uppercase letters and apply a paragraph style.

    To test the grep expression to make sure it was going to find exactly , I used a Grep Style, applying a “red” character style to highlight the found text.

    This allows me to instantly see if the Find/Change operation is going to apply the paragraph style to the wrong text.

    My own solutions (I like to try for myself first) were almost there but not quite. In the end I gave up and posted to this forum and also searched the Adobe Forums for a solution and found Peter Kharel's.

    ^[^l]+$

    This works perfectly.

    Thanks,

    Simon.

  • October 7, 2010 at 5:27 am #57277
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    (Aside – you're never too old to learn –:)

    A few of the common set commands also have a negatory command built-in:

    D is not d — anything except a digit

    U is not u

    L is not l

    W is not w

    S is not s

    B is not b (not usable on its own)

    The big caveat with all of these is that they also ignore the Hard Return! (*) But when you explicitly test with '^' and '$', Peter's GREP can be written, slightly shorter, as

    ^L+$

    (*) Which can be really annoying, because all other wildcards stop at the next Hard Return, unless specifically instructed otherwise.

  • October 7, 2010 at 5:46 am #57278
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Very good Jongware – I was thinking far too literally.

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