Multiline find/replace broken in 9.3?

[sampablokuper]

Hi there,

I'm mid-way through editing an XHTML document with oXygen 9.3. I've included an excerpt of that document below for illustration.

I want to find blocks between pairs of " entities, and to replace those entities with strings conforming to the q tag fix described at A List Apart.

For this, I've been using oXygen's Find/Replace dialog box (not in multifile mode), with the following settings:

Text to find: "(.+?)"
Replace with: &lsquo;<q>$1</q>&rsquo;
Direction: Forward
Scope: All
Case sensitive: false
Search also in tags: true
Regular expression: true
Wrap around: true

In the paragraph below, this only matches the string,

Code: Select all

", he told Lyell at the end of 1859, "

. However, I believe it ought to match many more strings, e.g.:

Code: Select all

"bitter

            opponents"

Code: Select all

" <em>per</em>

            version"

Code: Select all

"When I was in

            spirits"

and

Code: Select all

"I sometimes fancied that

            my book w <sup>d</sup> be successful; but I never even built a castle-in-the air of such

            success as it has met with; I do not mean the sale, but the impression it has made on

            you (whom I have always looked at as chief judge) & Hooker & Huxley. The

            whole has <em>infinitely</em> exceeded my wildest hopes.&mdash;"

Am I mistaken?

Here is the excerpt:

Code: Select all

<p>The two years covered in this volume were, without doubt, the most momentous of

            Darwin's life. From a quiet rural existence filled with steady work on his

            &lsquo;<q>big book</q>&rsquo; on species, he was jolted into action by the arrival of an

            unexpected letter from Alfred Russel Wallace. This letter led to the first announcement

            of Darwin's and Wallace's respective theories of organic change at the

            Linnean Society of London in July 1858 and prompted the composition and publication, in

            November 1859, of Darwin's major treatise <em>On the origin of species by means

                of natural selection</em>. By the end of 1859, Darwin's work was being

            discussed in publications as diverse as <em>The Times</em> and the <em>English

            Churchman</em>, and Darwin himself was busy as never before: answering letters,

            justifying and explaining his views to friends, relations, and "bitter

            opponents"; compiling corrections for a second and then a third edition of his

            book; and enthusiastically negotiating for possible American, French, and German

            editions. In particular, he rejoiced in the conversion (" <em>per</em>

            version" as he jokingly called it) to his views of close friends like Charles

            Lyell, Joseph Dalton Hooker, and Thomas Henry Huxley, who each, in his own way, had

            hesitated in relinquishing orthodox concepts of creation. "When I was in

            spirits", he told Lyell at the end of 1859, "I sometimes fancied that

            my book w <sup>d</sup> be successful; but I never even built a castle-in-the air of such

            success as it has met with; I do not mean the sale, but the impression it has made on

            you (whom I have always looked at as chief judge) & Hooker & Huxley. The

            whole has <em>infinitely</em> exceeded my wildest hopes.&mdash;" (letter to

            Charles Lyell, 25 [November 1859]). This transformation in Darwin's personal

            world and the intellectual turmoil that his writings precipitated are dramatically

            conveyed by the letters collected here.</p>

Many thanks in advance for your help,
Sam

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

For this, I've been using oXygen's Find/Replace dialog box (not in multifile mode), with the following settings:

Text to find: "(.+?)"
Replace with: &lsquo;<q>$1</q>&rsquo;
Direction: Forward
Scope: All
Case sensitive: false
Search also in tags: true
Regular expression: true
Wrap around: true

Your expression does not match multiline strings because the special character . from (.+?) does not match line terminators in a regexp. For matching also the multiline strings you have to use ((.|\n)+?).


Regards,
Sorin

[sampablokuper]

Ah, ok, I was thinking that dots matched newlines. Thanks for the clarification!