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• • March 15, 2010 at 4:58 am #52169
    Josh Freeman

    Member

    Just got a document where the author uses long series of periods instead of a tab with leader dots — all series are different lengths, of course. I'd love to replace these all at once with a nice simple tab character. Not being much a grep expert….can't figure out how to do this. Anyone know?

  • March 15, 2010 at 8:15 am #52170
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    A quick GREP primer: One-or-more is +. Any character is . so it's not a good idea to use this … Put a ackslash before it to make it literal: \. That makes the search expression

    \.+

    and you should replace it with a simple tab:

    Now hold on before you run off: that one-or-more means that a single period will also be replaced by a tab. I bet that's not what you had in mind, so let's make sure it only works with, say, 3 or more. This, instead, would work

    \.\.\.+

    but you can go for a fancy notation as well:

    \.{3,}

    No need for a plus! The {3,} part means: at least three times and an unlimited max (as there is no number given). (Some useful variants could be {3} to only find sets of 3 periods, or {3,5} to only find sets of 3, 4, and 5 periods.)

  • March 15, 2010 at 9:23 am #52171
    Josh Freeman

    Member

    I had managed to get most of the way myself, if turns out. But it wasn't working right. I thought it was the GREP I was creating, but it seems there must have been some other weird characters in there. I ended up replacing their mess by hand. it's fine. And (as usual) I learned a lot in the process. Always a good thing. 

    Thanks!

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