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dave-o-design
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GREP with multiple instances close to one another

Aug 6, 2012 8:14 PM

I'm having trouble with GREP outside of basics. I am using GREP to apply text styles to a paragraph. The text has been provided to me this way:

 

The colors starts as <ital>black<ital> and gradually progresses to <ital>white<ital>.

 

I'm using this: (<ital>).+(<ital>), which works fine in most circumstances. It fails on the above example, because it also italicizes "and gradually progresses to", which I don't want.

 

Can anyone be so kind as to point me in a direction of an explanation of what I'm doing wrong here?

 

Thanks in advance

426 Views   4 Replies   Latest reply: dave-o-design, Aug 8, 2012 8:51 PM
 
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  • Eugene Tyson
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    1. Eugene Tyson,
    Aug 7, 2012 1:12 AM   in reply to dave-o-design
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    I am unable to follow what you're doing. Can you post screen shots or simplify what you're doing?

     

    You mean the text comes to you with "<ital>black<ital>" in the text.

     

    So you want to make "black" italics? Or are you trying something else?

     
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  • [Jongware]
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    2. [Jongware],
    Aug 7, 2012 1:31 AM   in reply to dave-o-design
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    By default, GREP is Greedy and tries to match as much as text as possible. In your example

     

    dave-o-design wrote:

     

    The colors starts as <ital>black<ital> and gradually progresses to <ital>white<ital>.

     

    your match <ital>.+<ital> will match everything from the first to the last code. To switch to non-greedy mode, making it match the shortest possible match, change .+ to .+? like this:

     

    <ital>.+?<ital>

     
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  • dave-o-design
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    3. dave-o-design,
    Aug 7, 2012 1:41 AM   in reply to Eugene Tyson
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    You're exactly correct. The text has been supplied to me in a format where things that need to be italicized have been bookended with <ital>. I need to italicize both the words "black" and "white" in the following sentence:

     

    The colors starts as <ital>black<ital> and gradually progresses to <ital>white<ital>.

     

    The basic GREP expression I'm using works for most instances, but when it runs on the above example, it italicizes everything between the first <ital> before "black" and the last one after "white". I need it to italicize ONLY the words "black" and "white", without including the phrase "and gradually progresses to" that sits between them.

     
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  • dave-o-design
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    4. dave-o-design,
    Aug 8, 2012 8:51 PM   in reply to [Jongware]
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    Thank you, I was trying positive lookahead, etc which is why I was having so much trouble. I had no idea the solution was so simple.

     
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