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• • March 4, 2016 at 11:49 am #82626
    Scott Rudy

    Participant

    i need help writing a simple grep…

    i need a grep that will bold between and including two enclosing characters…

    john doe, MD; jim q. public, MD*; Cindy E. Verybody, MD; Jill Neigh Bor,MD*

    i need it to bold jim q public, MD* and Jill Neigh Bor, MD* but not john and cindy (they do not have a *)

    what i have so far that does not work…
    (?<=;).*?(?=*)
    it does not know to stop at the first “;” it comes to and does not bold the “;” or the “*”

  • March 6, 2016 at 5:29 am #82665
    Peter Kahrel

    Participant

    This is a tricky one. First of all, you need to escape the asterisk in your lookahead: use (?=\*), not (?=*) (because you’re after the * character literally, you don’t want to use it as an operator).

    But when you’ve fixed that you’ll find that the expression matches “jim q. public, MD” (as expected) and “Cindy E. Verybody, MD; Jill Neigh Bor,MD” (not expected). What you need to do is match from ; to * without any intervening ;. You can do that with this expression:

    (?<=;)[^;]+?(?=\*)

    Peter

  • March 7, 2016 at 9:09 am #82698
    Scott Rudy

    Participant

    peter,
    unfortunately i am getting no response from that …
    i have tried to figure out the [^;] but am not savvy enough to grasp it…
    it means the character set of ; back to the beginning of the paragraph?

    because i cannot wrap my head around this i am unable to trouble shoot why i am getting nothing when i add this to my style sheet

    would you be so kind as to help a little more?

  • March 7, 2016 at 9:22 am #82700
    Peter Kahrel

    Participant

    Strange, I copied the string from your original post and the Grep expression I suggested, and it works fine for me: the matches I get are “jim q. public, MD” and “Jill Neigh Bor,MD”. That’s correct, isn’t it? If it is, could you check the expression you used?

    As to [^;]+, ^ inside a character class means ‘not’. So [^;]+ means ‘mustn’t match a ; and the whole expression paraphrases as ‘match from ; up to * with no ; in between ; and *’.

  • March 7, 2016 at 12:04 pm #82712
    Scott Rudy

    Participant

    i tried it in a new document and it worked PERFECT!!!!
    i hope you have fun figuring out these grep that you help people with so freely. It is a great tool and i have done some really fun things with it but it frustrates me when i know i can see the pattern so i know it can be done, but cannot figure it out myself

    thanks for the assistance, thanks for the explanation and thank you your patience!!!!

    scott

  • March 8, 2016 at 4:04 am #82729
    Paul White

    Member

    I could do with some help as well with Grep which is similar query!

    How do you do the first 2 words at the start of a paragraph. I think I am having a memory block today?

  • March 8, 2016 at 4:19 am #82730
    Peter Kahrel

    Participant

    ^(.+?)(.+?)

    ^ from the start of a paragraph
    (.+?) capture characters
    up to the first space
    (.+?) capture characters after the space
    up to the second space

    Refer to the first word (in the Change to field) using $1, the second word, $2

    Peter

  • March 10, 2016 at 3:59 am #82810
    Paul White

    Member

    Hi Peter thanks for your reply. It doesn’t work on my document

    John Bishop has been married to his wife Melanie since 1993, with an 18 month separation that began in 2000.[22][23] They have three sons: Joe, Luke, and Daniel.[22][24] They live in Cheshire.[25]

    John Bishop enjoys playing football and is an avid Live etc….

    Looking at making the first ‘ 2 words’ of a paragraph style grep character style.

    Am I missing something?

  • March 10, 2016 at 5:03 am #82812
    Peter Kahrel

    Participant

    Only after copying your sample did I discover what went wrong. (It did work, by the way, but not correctly — it’s always helpful to indicate in what way something doesn’t work.) Your sample has a return between the two paragraphs and a space before that return, so in the expression I gave started matching the return and/or rogue space character. This expression should fix that:

    ^(.+?)(.+?)(?=)

    stands for ‘horizontal space’, so it matsches all spaces except the hard return. And I added (?=) so that the expression doesn’t match the space after the second word.

    P.

  • March 10, 2016 at 7:02 am #82813
    Paul White

    Member

    Hi Peter I don’t doubt you one bit… but for some reason either one works in my document?

    ???

    Can i send you the file just in case I am being a dumb a%$$?

  • March 10, 2016 at 8:02 am #82816
    Scott Rudy

    Participant

    thanks for piggybacking on my post….i tried out peters grep and it works like a charm, this is one i will be writing down for some other use

    and , peter thanks for spelling out what the different codes mean, it really helps me wrap my head around this

    scott

  • March 10, 2016 at 8:32 am #82818
    Paul White

    Member

    No probs Scott.

    I thought it related similar to your original question.

    However, just tried it in a clean document and still can get it to work :(
    The reasoning for the code does help, some of which I have never seen before. So thank you.

  • March 10, 2016 at 8:36 am #82819
    Scott Rudy

    Participant

    what response are you getting when you assign the paragraph style, which has the grep assigning the character style, to the text?

  • March 10, 2016 at 1:22 pm #82839
    Peter Kahrel

    Participant

    Paul,

    > but for some reason either one works in my document?

    I guess you meant ‘neither’ :)

    Before sending any files, could you tell me what goes wrong? When you enter the GREP expression in the Find What field of the GREP tab (you are using the GREP tab aren’t you?) and click the Find button, what happens?

    1. InDesign shows an alert saying ‘Cannot find match’.
    2. InDesign finds something, and highlights it, but it’s not what you expected or intended.

    Please be clearer about ‘It doesn’t work’.

    Peter

  • March 11, 2016 at 2:04 am #82850
    Paul White

    Member

    Sorry Peter for not being clear on whats happening.

    I know how grep works and how to test it, I just don’t know enough how to write the code.

    I did do I a find and replace [grep tab] and its highlights the text’, I did copy the text from this thread back into the document as I know you used this to create the code.

    Just to be sure I copied the text into my grep document which as a paragraph styles with working grep codes attached, just to check it wasn’t a document issue.

    I even checked there was no character style active which I know sometimes overrides the paragraph styling. I am at a bit of a loss

    its a shame I can’t attach a screen shot!

  • March 11, 2016 at 2:15 am #82851
    Paul White

    Member

    Just found the problem after I sent the last message.

    When I copied the code from this site it must of add a space at the end or something. If I delete anything after the last character of the code including the last ) and re-enter ) after the then it works.

    Even the first code

    ^(.+?)(.+?)

    works now.

    Strangely, when I copied your code yesterday and used the grep tab is was erroring on cannot find match. Sorry for being a pain but got there in the end and is now in my bank of useful grep codes.

    Just so I know to do 3 words its

    ^(.+?)(.+?)(.+?)(?=)

    thanks for your help Peter

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