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Syntax of Search Pattern
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Syntax of Search Pattern
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The syntax of Search Pattern:
There are checkboxs of "Regular Expression" and "Enhanced Regular Expression" in Replace dialog:
1. If user check "Enhanced Regular Exp" option, - system will use "Enhanced Regular Expression" syntax.
2. If user check "Regular Expression" option, - system will use "Perl Regular Expression" syntax, this is default settings since version 2.2.
3. If neither of the options are checked, - system will treated "Search Pattern" and "Replace Pattern" as normal text, just like notepad.
To know detail definition and example, please refer to Enhanced Regular Expression and Perl Regular Expression
In addition following Symbols are supported in "Regular Expression" or "Enhanced Regular Expression" types:
1. ` ` or ' ' -- characters between two back quote or single quote are treated as normal character, if user want to use original quote ' or `, a backslash should be entered before the single quote like \' or \`.
Note: if both `` and '' exists in search pattern, the symbol that appears first will take effect.
2. < > -- item between < > will be replaced with user defined Macro, it keep untouched if the Macro does not exist, see Macros part for detail.
3. Table and Return -- User can also input Table and Return directly into the Entry, multi-line match and replace is supported, see example "Replace multi-line text" in Chars replace session
Note: if user fill nothing in the entry 'search for pattern', but fill in other entries like 'replace with pattern', the 'Search for pattern' will be automatically set to '.*'(any) by system in most cases.
Ignore cases:
There is a checkbox of "Ignore cases" in the "Replace" dialog, if this option is selected, system will ignore the cases of letter in search pattern.
Examples:
<abc> --> The user or system defined Macro <abc>
abc&'def|xyz' --> Item including abc and 'def|xyz', 'def|xyz' stands for 7 normal characters here.
abc
def --> multi-line text, equal to abc\ndef