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• • April 25, 2016 at 1:23 pm #84278
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hi all!

    I’m guessing this is an easy one, but I’m still having trouble.

    I’d like to take the most commonly used abbreviations used to express “for example” and “that is” also known as “e.g.,” and “i.e.,” respectively and change them to follow correct and consistent formatting throughout a file.

    So, it could read:

    eg. OR eg., OR eg OR e.g.

    All instances should be changed to:

    e.g.,

    Hints? I can usually get one thing to work at a time, but I’m still getting hung up. I’m testing it with eg. and all of the examples listed above and troubleshooting with the word “eggs” and I can’t get it to behave the way I think it should!

    Thanks!
    Elizabeth

  • April 25, 2016 at 1:31 pm #84281
    Matt Isaac

    Participant

    In GREP a vertical bar (shift+\) | is used to represent OR.
    so if you wanted exactly “eg. OR eg., OR eg OR e.g.” you could use [eg.|eg.,|eg|e.g.] and replace with e.g.,
    though the expression e\.?g\.?\,? replace with e.g., would also work.

    • April 25, 2016 at 1:42 pm #84282
      Matt Isaac

      Participant

      my first expression should be eg\.\,|eg\.|eg|e\.g\.

  • April 25, 2016 at 1:56 pm #84283
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    That finds the “eg” in knowlege, eggs, leg, etc.

    It doesn’t make sense to me, because your expression is where I started.

  • April 25, 2016 at 2:02 pm #84284
    Matt Isaac

    Participant

    you would then want to use lookarounds to find spaces so it won’t pick up eg inside other words
    (?<=)eg\.\,|eg\.|eg|e\.g\.(?=)

    • April 26, 2016 at 6:17 am #84297
      Matt Isaac

      Participant

      Sorry i typed that on my phone last night without getting to verify the expression.. there should be parenthesis around (eg\.\,|eg\.|eg|e\.g\.) though if there are any instances where e.g. would not be enclosed by spaces on either side, (e.g.,, at the start or end of a paragraph) you may want to use (?<=[\L\U])(eg\.\,|eg\.|eg|e\.g\.)(?=[\L\U])

  • April 26, 2016 at 9:30 am #84324
    Ari Singer

    Member

    This should be the code you’re looking for. It works for all the variations that you mentioned, including uppercase and lowercase.

    \<[eE]\.?[gG]\.?,?(?= )

    Following is the translation:

    At the beginning of a word (\<)
    Find an ‘e’ or ‘E’ ([eE])
    Followed by a period (\.) which may or may not be there (?)
    Folllowed by a ‘g’ or ‘G’ ([gG])
    Followed by a period (\.) which may or may not be there (?)
    Followed by a comma (,) which may or may not be there (?)
    Which is then followed by a space, but don’t capture that space, AKA Positive Lookahead ((?= ))

    • April 26, 2016 at 10:44 am #84326
      Matt Isaac

      Participant

      Ari, I know this is not connected to the topic but i was wondering if you could tell me how to put strings of text into those boxes?

    • April 26, 2016 at 11:18 am #84328
      Ari Singer

      Member

      Sure!

      If you have a basic understanding of HTML, then this will be easy. If not, it might take time to wrap your head around it, but bear with me.

      Any text that you want to display as code you have to enclose it in ‹code› tags.

      Example: Let’s say you want to take the following statement: “I am 23 years old”, and ‘codify’ the number ’23’ so it is displayed as code. So immediately before the ’23’ you have to type in an Opening Code Tag (‹code›) and immediately after the ’23’ you have to type in a Closing Code Tag (‹/code›). As you probably noticed, the difference between the opening tag and the closing tag is the forward slash (/) immediately before the tag name.

      So what you basically did is enclosed the number ’23’ in (‹code›) tags.
      So it will look like this: I am ‹code›23‹/code› years old. But when you submit the post, these tags or omitted from the actual text in your post, and instead you see the predefined code formatting on all the text that you enclosed in the ‹code› tags. So it will look like this by the rest of the world: I am 23 years old.

      I hope I was clear enough, if not feel free to ask me.

    • April 27, 2016 at 5:46 am #84348
      Anonymous

      Inactive

      Your GREP is working fabulously, Ari. Thank you so much. Your explanation of each piece of the expression is extremely helpful. This helps me learn!

  • April 26, 2016 at 11:42 am #84330
    Matt Isaac

    Participant

    Thanks, I am familiar with HTML. Though I’d never thought to use it in forums. I was actually thinking that it would be something to do with text editing for premium members.

    • April 26, 2016 at 12:12 pm #84331
      Ari Singer

      Member

      :)
      You can even use more functions. Such as ’em’ to italicize, ‘strong’ to bold, ‘ol’ or ‘ul’ for ordered lists and unordered lists respectively.

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