Check if a nested grep style exists! …

[Obi-wan Kenobi]

Hi Scripters,

Add a nested grep style to a para style is easy! … but how to check if this nested grep style already exists? 

and, accessorily, how to remove it? 

Thanks in advance!

(^/)

[Laubender]

Hi Obi-wan,

what did you try so far?

For paragraph styles we have the property:

nestedGrepStyle

And that object collection has the properties:

appliedCharacterStyle

grepExpression

Regards,
Uwe

// EDIT

[Laubender]

The other question about removing GREP styles:

You have to do it one by one if you want to remove them all.

There is a bug with InDesign's nested GREP styles that would not allow the following and throws an error:

myParaGraphStyle.nestedGrepStyles.everyItem().remove();

Wheras this would work:

var nestedGREPStyles = myParaGraphStyle.nestedGrepStyles.everyItem().getElements();
for(var n=nestedGREPStyles.length-1; n>=0;n--)
{
nestedGREPStyles.remove();
}

Regards,
Uwe

[Obi-wan Kenobi]

Uwe,

Thanks!

About the first point, I know these codes and how to add a nested grep style to an existent para style!

my difficulty is how to verify if a NGS I want to add already exists in the para style! If not, I add it, if yes, I do nothing! The problem is to do it with several NGS to be checked too!

(^/)

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

You could check the name or perhaps better the id number of the appliedCharacterStyle PLUS the value of the grepExpression. If both are the same in a particular nestedGrepStyle you found the one you were looking for. If it's important if a style is used in a particular stacking order, you could also factor in the index number of the found nestedGrepStyle .

Regards,
Uwe

[Obi-wan Kenobi]

Yeap!

Do you mean something like this:

var myDoc = app.activeDocument,
myFootnotePStyle = myDoc.paragraphStyles.item("Footnote"),
myNestedGrepStyles = myFootnotePStyle.nestedGrepStyles.everyItem().getElements(),
N = myNestedGrepStyles.length;
for( var n = N-1; n >=0; n--) {
    myNGS = myNestedGrepStyles;
    if ( myNGS.appliedCharacterStyle.name == "NB"  &&  myNGS.grepExpression == "~>=" ) alert("Gotcha!  =D")
    else alert("Bordel de m… !*  :(")
    }

[ * French rudeness!  =D ]

(^/) 

[Laubender]

Yes.

Be aware that you have to escape characters for expressions like that:

"\d" => "\\d"

Otherwise your if statement will fail.

Regards,
Uwe

[Laubender]

And another thing to note:
We must be aware, that one can add a particular GREP style more than one time to a paragraph style.

Have a nice weekend!

Uwe

[Laubender]

And that property nestedGrepStyles is not only a property of paragraphStyles, but also a property of e.g. the Text object.
That means a nested GREP style could also be there as an override of the applied paragraph style.

Now again:

Have a nice weekend! 🙂

Uwe

[Obi-wan Kenobi]

Thanks! I'll take a look!

You too!

(^/)

[Raphaël Freeman]

thank you for this. It was just what I was looking for!