Path: ...!feeds.phibee-telecom.net!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net>
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Confused first time Kate user
Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2024 07:22:14 -0500
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 92
Message-ID: <v63fpo$26b4i$1@dont-email.me>
References: <v613h1$1m6k5$1@dont-email.me> <v61504$1mdqj$1@dont-email.me>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:22:16 +0200 (CEST)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="4cad192d0203673fb726164e4e65e426";
	logging-data="2305170"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/YtJ06Eis/PUdt/mdnLhSvHHkTmlAsw2w="
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
 SeaMonkey/2.49.4
Cancel-Lock: sha1:zyLZI8n00XY5ogVuQQyw1Neu+lE=
In-Reply-To: <v61504$1mdqj$1@dont-email.me>
Bytes: 3879

On 07/02/2024 10:05 AM, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> On 02.07.2024 16:40, Richard Owlett wrote:
>> I have a Debian machine with Kate Version 16.08.3 .
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't know the Kate editor. But I know Regular
> Expressions (RE).
> 
>>
>> I wish to do a search & replace using regular expressions.
>> The "Help" menu has led to
>> https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kate/katepart/regular-expressions.html
>> and
>> https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kate/katepart/regex-patterns.html
>>
>> I have strings of the form "XYZn" where n is one to three digits
>> representing values of from 1 to 299. I wish to replace all occurrences
>> with "abc".
> 
> You may do that with simple patterns if you don't have, say,
> strings like XYZ300 that shall be disregarded.

What I must avoid is it recognizing XYZ0 as a match.
That would create chaos ;/

> Then the RE
> may simply be  XYZ[0-9]+  meaning any string XYZ that is
> followed by an arbitrary number of digits. Instead you can
> specify digits as optional  XYZ[0-9][0-9]?[0-9]?  or define
> the amount of digits (1-3) explicitly  XYZ[0-9]{1,3}  which
> still allows numbers out of range 1..299 (say, 0, 300) or
> undesired syntaxes like 00 or 000. - Not sure it matters in
> your case. If it matters, you can define alternatives with
> a bar-symbol, e.g.,  XYZ([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]|[1-2][0-9][0-9])
> that you group with parenthesis.

If Kate accepts XYZ([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]|[1-2][0-9][0-9]) as proper syntax, 
it should do what I was trying to specify.

Having spent decades in QA/QC related tasks, I pay close attention to my 
first reference explicitly warning that Kate does not handle regular 
expressions exactly the same as some other editors. Hence the first 
lined of my post ;}

> 
> Where you put such regular expressions in your Kate editor
> is known to you, I suppose?

Yes. There are some advantages to a GUI ;}
In fact I just tried it.

I gave it:
> XYZ hello world
> XYZ0 hello world
> XYZ017 hello world
> XYZ1 hello world
> XYZ34 hello world
> XYZ999 hello world

It correctly replied:
> XYZ hello world
> XYZ0 hello world
> XYZ017 hello world
> abc hello world
> abc hello world
> abc9 hello world

> 
>>
>> The documents give essentially no examples.
> 
> Regular expressions may first appear confusing, but the links
> you posted actually has relevant examples.

No problem with regular expressions per se.
As my background was component level analog electronics, I ended up 
working for DEC in Power Supply Engineering in mid-70's. My intro to 
regular expressions was observing guys in adjacent department having fun 
with TECO.

> 
>>
>> Help please.
>> TIA
> 
> Hope that helps.

IT DID!

> 
> Janis
>