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• • November 22, 2009 at 2:26 am #53886
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I've been working on a lot of grep for my company's catalog style sheets lately and have come up with a problem that i don't think can be fixed, but I'm gonna put it up here and see if you folks can solve it.

    In one of my paragraph styles, you'll frequently see text like:

    Color: (01) black (handbag only), (02)white, (03), blue (coat only)

    with the (xx only) blocks italicized. I understand that if they said (only black), i could easily write an expression:

    (only.+?) and apply an italicized character style to it, but its not possible for this to look in reverse:

    (.+?only) will find the first “(” in the paragraph and go all the way to the first instance of “only)”

    can anyone else think of a different way to write this style so that it would work? if only you could make GREP start at the end of a specific expression and go to the front.

  • November 22, 2009 at 9:14 am #53888
    LAURENT TOURNIER

    Member

    Hello,

    With you example, this regex works : ([^)]+only)

    It finds (handbag only) and (coat only)

    Laurent

  • November 22, 2009 at 1:03 pm #53890
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    (In this case I'd avoid having italicized and regular parentheses right next to eachother. Changing Laurent's expression to

    (?<=()[^)]+only(?=))

    will do that.)

  • November 22, 2009 at 2:52 pm #53891
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    @jongware

    (?<=()[^)]+only(?=))

    Ok I understand (?<=() That's a positive look behind (?<=) and ( is a a parenthesis

    Just wondering what the following does?

    • [^)]+

    I know that (?=)) = postive lookahead and ) is a closed parenthesis

    How does this GREP work?

  • November 22, 2009 at 3:04 pm #53892
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    [ .. ] group definition

    [^ .. ] not group definition — anything except what's inbetween the brackets

    [^)] anything but a closing parenthesis

    [^)]+ lots of characters, stop on the first encountered closing parenthesis

    … but not tested … perhaps the ) needs a backslash? (I didn't think so, because you cannot define groups inside an inclusion group.)

  • November 22, 2009 at 3:56 pm #53893
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Thanks Jongware – that is indeed very clever. Gotta remember that one.

  • November 22, 2009 at 4:14 pm #53894
    LAURENT TOURNIER

    Member

    Hi,

    The parenthesis, as litteral character, inside a group [ ] or negative group [^ ] doesn't need blackslash. Same think for [ { } + . ? * | ^ $

    @ Jongware : thanks for explanations, it is difficult for me to explain in english.

    In the regex, you can also use [^(]+

    Laurent

  • November 22, 2009 at 4:32 pm #53895
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Wow, you guys are fast. Yeah, with Jongware's explanation it seems to make sense. Just to clarify, i could do the same for any sentence ending in “may not specify” by using:

    (?<=.)[^.]+may not specify.

    Right? Big help guys, thanks

    And yes I would agree with jongware on not italicizing the () characters, but sadly the choice is not mine. Its a 20+yo catalog and they're not too keen on changing the style standards for the sake of good design standards

    edited grep code so its actually correct, left out the lookbehind oops

  • November 22, 2009 at 10:37 pm #53900
    valedot

    Member

    Hello to all from Italy, are an Italian ignorant, I know the English language …
    might work in your opinion this solution?

    ([(]only)s?(w+[)])|([(]w+)s?(only[)])

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