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• • March 15, 2010 at 7:07 am #55151
    Cindy Kelley

    Participant

    Hi,

    I am so wanting to learn GREP but finding it a slow learning process for me. I am hoping at some point things will just “click” and I will become a master :)

    Until then, I need some help

    I am working on a photography book that lists various lens used by the photographer. These should be listed, in italics, as “24-70mm” but at times they are listed “24 – 105mm” or “70-200 mm”

    Can anyone help me out with the expression to solve this problem with GREP?

    thanks!

    cindy in indy

  • March 15, 2010 at 7:24 am #55153
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    (sorry for all the edits, i can't get a backslash (reverse solidus) to show up in the text, even when I put in the html code… everywhere you see the letter “d+” insert backslash before it)

    Ok this should work

    Find

    (d+).+?(d+).?mm

    Change To

    $1-$2mm

    Explanation:

    d+ is any amount of digits in a row

    . is to find any character, and

    +? is to find the shortest match

    d+ finds any amount of digits in a row again

    .? will find any character zero or once only, and

    mm is simply the text you have “mm”

    (d+).+?(d+).?mm

    Anything that is in brackets (parenthesis) are marked as “found”

    $1 and $2 are to use the “found” text and insert it

    $1-$2 is to put a hyphen between the found text

    and mm at the end is to mark it as mm

    So find

    (d+).+?(d+).?mm

    Change to

    $1-$2mm

    Should find any instance of digits with any characters inbetween them once it's followed by mm.

  • March 15, 2010 at 9:36 am #55156
    erickp

    Member

    Sorry but I don't mean to hi-jack this post but I have a question about a GREP expression.

    How do I specifiy to change any number that is followed by double quote to that same number but with double straight quote?

    I have an issue of imported text that contains inches and foot quotes but they come in as normal quotes, not the proper straight quotes. Is there a GREP expression to change and replace all of these? Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

    ~Erick

  • March 15, 2010 at 10:32 am #55157
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    <backslash> = reverse solidus character

    Find

    (<backslash>d+)~}

    Change

    $1~”

  • March 15, 2010 at 10:46 am #55158
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    (Erick, why not simply create a new thread?)

    With lookbehind, search for:

    (?<=d)~}

    replace with

    ~”

  • March 15, 2010 at 11:08 am #55159
    Cindy Kelley

    Participant

    thank you so much. your explanation of what each expression defines is very helpful.

    Although your solution worked for what I requested (I did put in the backslashes), I realize now that I didn't give you enough information.

    I am wanting to take the text:

    Figure 1-1: Photo was taken with a Canon EOS 1D Mark III Camera, 70 – 200 mm lens at 145mm, 1/320 sec, f/4.5 and ISO 200, in manual exposure mode.

    or

    Figure 1-1: Photo was taken with a Canon EOS 1D Mark III Camera, 70 – 200 mm lens at 145mm, 1/320 sec, f/4.5 and ISO 200, in manual exposure mode.

    and convert it to

    Figure 1-1: Photo was taken with a Canon EOS 1D Mark III Camera, 70–200mm lens at 145mm, 1/320 sec, f/4.5 and ISO 200, in manual exposure mode.

    With your solution, I was getting all instances of any number with a mm following the number and not necessarily containing a hyphen or it was finding the numbers following the word Figure (i.e. Figure 1-1:)

    I tried messing around with it myself some but I ended up getting 70 – —2mm :)

    
    

    
    
  • March 15, 2010 at 11:21 am #55160
    erickp

    Member

    @Jongware: Thanks for the expression. Now I get it. Still trying to make sense of it but I'll get it.

    I didn't want to start yet another GREP thread. Perhaps I should have but I didn't see any harm in asking within this thread. My apologies if it's out of line.

    ~Erick

  • March 15, 2010 at 12:52 pm #55162
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Try this

    (d+)…(d+).?mm

    and the same Change to as before

    Perhaps that works

    (backslashes before the d again)

  • March 15, 2010 at 3:04 pm #55163
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    Erick, no harm done, except it might get hard to have four people (five now) speaking through eachother on not-too related topics …

    Yikes, Eugene! That'll eat the middle digits right out of “12-34 mm”! Let's see. “24 – 105mm” or “70-200 mm” to “70-200mm”. Digits, some optional spaces, and a hyphen. Well, you were on the right track, but your previous efforts used the 'any' character, removing it as-you-went, no matter what it was. All it takes is a precise copy of the format, with question marks making the spaces optional:

    (d) ?- ?(d+) ?mm

    — replacing with

    $1-$2mm

    I prefer to use as much lookbehind and lookahead as possible, as (I think) it's faster to change as less as possible, but here I might get a bit less obvious:

    (?<=d) ?- ?(d+) ?(?=mm)

    — replacing with

    -$1

  • March 15, 2010 at 3:22 pm #55165
    Cindy Kelley

    Participant

    Eugene,

    PERFECT! Thank you! This is going to save me a lot of time in edits.

    And your detailed explanation helps me get one step closer to learning this stuff myself.

    thanks again,

    cindy in indy

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