Tip of the Week: Making Space Characters Visible in GREP

Peter Kahrel

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This InDesign tip on making space characters visible in GREP was sent to Tip of the Week email subscribers on September 14, 2017.

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Space characters are often not so easy to spot in GREP expressions. To make them visible in your code, use \x{0020}, which is the Unicode notation for the space character. Or use the code \s, which stands for any white space (including paragraph breaks and tabs).

For example, set[-\s]?up has the same meaning as set[- ]?up but is much clearer since someone looking at the code doesn’t have to guess if there’s a space there, or what is meant by the invisible space after the dash.