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visual studio .net ide : Replace Glitch with RegExp
^:Wh*Stuff and the following Replacement: OtherStuff I would expect that occurances of "Stuff" that are preceded by nothing but white-space and anchored to the beginning of the line would be replaced by "OtherStuff". The problem is that the anchoring does not occur -- *all* the white-space on the current line and previous lines that immediately precede "Stuff" is replaced. The workaround is to specify the RegExp as: ^[ \t]*Stuff -- // Lee Silver // Information Concepts Inc. // http://www.information-concepts.com Facilitating the automated conversion of Data into Information since 1982
Hello Lee,
Thanks for posting in the group. Based on my understanding, now the question is: You want to verify the occurances which are preceded by nothing but white-space and anchored to the beginning of one line. However, you find ^:Wh*Stuff doesn't work, and ^[ \t]*Stuff works. Please feel free to post here if I have misunderstood anything. The complete list of metacharacters and their behavior in the context of regular expressions are listed at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/script56/html/js56jsgrpRegExpSyntax. asp?frame=true From it, we can see that, ^ matches the position at the beginning of the input string, which is right. However, :Wh doesn't mean white space there. Instead, \s matches any white space character including space, tab, form-feed, and so on. Equivalent to [ \f\n\r\t\v]. So I think ^[ \s]*Stuff works for you too. Also, if we input :WhhhStufffdsf in the begining of one line, it matches ^:Wh*Stuff. Does that answer your question? Ps: We can send post notify email to you when there are useful replies to your post in the newsgroup. If you want to receive it in the future, please register a no spam email alias at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=/servicedesks/msdn/nospam.asp &SD=msdn. Best regards, Yanhong Huang Microsoft Community Support Get Secure! ¨C www.microsoft.com/security This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
YanHong:
Thanks for the response. You understand my problem. If \s* will work in place of [ \t]* (or even :Wh*), that's even better -- less to key in. When you click Help Replace dialogue and then rhe Regular Expressions link there are a number of :xx thingies that are short-hands for Unicode-character properties. Among them is :Wh which states ":Wh Matches all types of white space, including publishing and ideographic spaces." I'd also note that that same page does *not* show \s at all. -- // Lee Silver // Information Concepts Inc. // http://www.information-concepts.com Facilitating the automated conversion of Data into Information since 1982 [quoted text, click to view] > Hello Lee,
> > Thanks for posting in the group. > > Based on my understanding, now the question is: You want to verify the > occurances which are preceded by nothing but white-space and anchored to > the beginning of one line. However, you find ^:Wh*Stuff doesn't work, and > ^[ \t]*Stuff works. Please feel free to post here if I have misunderstood > anything. > > The complete list of metacharacters and their behavior in the context of > regular expressions are listed at: > http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/script56/html/js56jsgrpRegExpSyntax. > asp?frame=true > > From it, we can see that, ^ matches the position at the beginning of the > input string, which is right. However, :Wh doesn't mean white space there. > Instead, \s matches any white space character including space, tab, > form-feed, and so on. Equivalent to [ \f\n\r\t\v]. So I think ^[ \s]*Stuff > works for you too. > > Also, if we input :WhhhStufffdsf in the begining of one line, it matches > ^:Wh*Stuff. > > Does that answer your question? > > Ps: We can send post notify email to you when there are useful replies to > your post in the newsgroup. If you want to receive it in the future, please > register a no spam email alias at: > http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=/servicedesks/msdn/nospam.asp > &SD=msdn. > > Best regards, > Yanhong Huang > Microsoft Community Support > > Get Secure! ¨C www.microsoft.com/security > This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. >
YanHong:
As a follow-up, I tried \s and it doesn't do anything -- the Replace-dialog told me that the requested text wasn't found. I changed the \s back to [ \t] and all worked well; so I suspect the documentation is correct and that \s is not a short-hand for anything. -- // Lee Silver // Information Concepts Inc. // http://www.information-concepts.com Facilitating the automated conversion of Data into Information since 1982 [quoted text, click to view] > YanHong:
> > Thanks for the response. > > You understand my problem. If \s* will work in place of [ \t]* (or even > :Wh*), that's even better -- less to key in. > > When you click Help Replace dialogue and then rhe Regular Expressions > link there are a number of :xx thingies that are short-hands for > Unicode-character properties. Among them is :Wh which states ":Wh > Matches all types of white space, including publishing and ideographic > spaces." I'd also note that that same page does *not* show \s at all.
[quoted text, click to view]
Lee Silver wrote: > YanHong: > > Thanks for the response. > > You understand my problem. If \s* will work in place of [ \t]* (or > even :Wh*), that's even better -- less to key in. > > When you click Help Replace dialogue What is "Help Replace dialogue" ? Is it possible its functionality doesn't match the .NET Regex syntax ? [quoted text, click to view] > and then rhe Regular Expressions > link there are a number of :xx thingies that are short-hands for > Unicode-character properties. Among them is :Wh which states ":Wh > Matches all types of white space, including publishing and > ideographic spaces." I'd also note that that same page does *not* > show \s at all.
Edward:
[quoted text, click to view] > What is "Help Replace dialogue" ? Is it possible its functionality doesn't > match the .NET Regex syntax ? Bad choice of wording on my part. I was referring to click on the Help button on the Replace dialogue. It brings up a page with a link to the IDE's Regex syntax, which may be different than that of .NET. -- // Lee Silver // Information Concepts Inc. // http://www.information-concepts.com Facilitating the automated conversion of Data into Information since 1982
Hello Lee,
I tested \s on my side and it works fine. For detailed list on .NET compatible metacharacters, please refer to this page: http://www.regexlib.com/CheatSheet.htm. It has links to different MSDN pages. Also, you can go to http://www.regexlib.com/RETester.aspx to use the small tool provided to test it. Thanks very much. Best regards, Yanhong Huang Microsoft Community Support Get Secure! ¨C www.microsoft.com/security This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. This response contains a reference to a third-party World Wide Web site. Microsoft is providing this information as a convenience to you. Microsoft does not control these sites and has not tested any software or information found on these sites; therefore, Microsoft cannot make any representations regarding the quality, safety, or suitability of any software or information found there. There are inherent dangers in the use of any software found on the Internet, and Microsoft cautions you to make sure that you completely understand the risk before retrieving any software from the Internet.
Yan-Hong:
First, thanks for the cheat-sheet link. \s does ineed skip white-space. The problem is that ^\s doesn't work. If I specify \s*text the IDE will find text preceded by white-space; but if I specify ^\s*text then nothing is found. -- // Lee Silver // Information Concepts Inc. // http://www.information-concepts.com Facilitating the automated conversion of Data into Information since 1982 [quoted text, click to view] > Hello Lee, > > I tested \s on my side and it works fine. > > For detailed list on .NET compatible metacharacters, please refer to this > page: http://www.regexlib.com/CheatSheet.htm. It has links to different > MSDN pages. > > Also, you can go to http://www.regexlib.com/RETester.aspx to use the small > tool provided to test it. > > Thanks very much. > > Best regards, > Yanhong Huang > Microsoft Community Support
[quoted text, click to view]
On Mon, 02 Feb 2004 21:12:35 GMT, Lee Silver <LSilver@information-concepts.com> wrote: >\s does ineed skip white-space. The problem is that ^\s doesn't work. If I >specify \s*text the IDE will find text preceded by white-space; but if I specify >^\s*text then nothing is found. It won't work in my IDE either but ^[:Wh]*text works fine. I'm not too sure about the \s. It doesn't seem to be documented. regards, bullshark
Hello Lee,
Thanks for your update. Could you please email me your testing sample? After reproducing it on my side, I will pass it to our product team. You can reach me by removing online from my email address here. Thanks. Best regards, Yanhong Huang Microsoft Community Support Get Secure! ¨C www.microsoft.com/security This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
bullshark:
I just tried this and it doesn't quite work, but thanks for the suggestion (the thread started with me using a similar regexp, just no brackets). It not only find 'text' preceded by arbitrary white-space and the start of the line, it also selects the previous line if all it has is \n. OTOH, ^[ \t]*text works just fine, just more keystrokes. -- // Lee Silver // Information Concepts Inc. // http://www.information-concepts.com Facilitating the automated conversion of Data into Information since 1982 [quoted text, click to view] > It won't work in my IDE either but
> > ^[:Wh]*text works fine. > > I'm not too sure about the \s. It doesn't seem to be documented.
Yan-Hong Huang:
I'm not sure what type of sample I can give you. I'm in the IDE trying to do a search and replace of some text in my source-files. A sample snippet from a source-file is as follows (the lines between the rows of ===.) ============= Dim Result as Short Dim Amount As Short ============= Given the following regexp: ^:Wh*Dim Result I claim that what should be selected is " Dim Result". Instead, the previous empty line is also selected. Also, using your suggestion, the regexp: ^\s*Dim Result selects nothing and displays the dialog that 'the specified text was not found' -- // Lee Silver // Information Concepts Inc. // http://www.information-concepts.com Facilitating the automated conversion of Data into Information since 1982 [quoted text, click to view] > Thanks for your update.
> > Could you please email me your testing sample? After reproducing it on my > side, I will pass it to our product team. > > You can reach me by removing online from my email address here. Thanks. > > Best regards, > Yanhong Huang > Microsoft Community Support
Hello Lee,
Thanks for your reply. Now I know it happens in VS.NET IDE. I reproduced it exactly. I will pass it to our VS.NET product group. Thanks very much for your feedback on our product. If you have any more concerns on it, please feel free to let me know. Best regards, Yanhong Huang Microsoft Community Support Get Secure! ¨C www.microsoft.com/security This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Hello Lee,
After consulting our product group, I finally got the right answer for this question. :) The expression ^:Wh*Dim Result in our VS Regular expression view breaks down into the following: At the beginning of the line (^), one or more white-space occurances (:Wh*) followed by the words "Dim Result". Note that white space means any white space characters, including line breaks, tabs, etc. In your example, we returned the line previous to "Dim Result as Short" as well as "Dim Result" because that empty line had a whitespace (line break) at the beginning of the line. This was then followed by the white space (tab) at the beginning of the "Dim Result" line. Because of the "^:Wh*", we wanted zero or more occurances of a white space at the beginning of the line. Therefore, both lines were selected. Also, it should be noted that in VS Find/Replace, we use our own version of regular expressions. The Visual Studio Expression syntax can be found under the help topic ms-help://MS.VSCC.2003/MS.MSDNQTR.2003FEB.1033/vsintro7/html/vxgrfRegularExp ressionsS.htm (An easy way to get to this topic is click the expression builder button (the right arrow located beside the Find What: combobox), then click on "Complete character list") In the example above, since the white spaces before "Dim Result" was actually just a tab, then ^[\t]*Dim Result would return ok, since we are looking for zero or more occurances of a tab at the beginning of a line followed by Dim Result. For ^[\s]*Dim Result, it returned "Specified Text wasn't found" because if you look at our supported syntax, \s is not supported. In essense, you were just looking for zero or more occurances of "s" at the beginning of the line followed directly by Dim Result. For us, the solution is to explicitly state that you want the search to be contained in a line. This can be done by the following regular expression ^~(\n):Wh*Dim Result This statement says give me any match where the beginning of the line doesn't contain a line break, contains zero or more occurances of any white space, followed by Dim Result. Does that answer your question? Thanks very much for working with us so closely. Best regards, Yanhong Huang Microsoft Community Support Get Secure! ¨C www.microsoft.com/security This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Yan-Hong:
Thanks for the follow-ups. The answer you were given -- that :Wh space matches any white space characters, including line breaks, tabs, etc. -- makes sense when I think about it; and it agrees with the documentation. Since the idea behind my trying to use ^:Wh was to minimize key-strokes, your proposed solution -- ^~(\n):Wh* -- used too many for me; I'll stick to ^[ \t]*. -- // Lee Silver // Information Concepts Inc. // http://www.information-concepts.com Facilitating the automated conversion of Data into Information since 1982 [quoted text, click to view] > Hello Lee,
> > After consulting our product group, I finally got the right answer for this > question. :) > > The expression ^:Wh*Dim Result in our VS Regular expression view breaks > down into the following: > At the beginning of the line (^), one or more white-space occurances (:Wh*) > followed by the words "Dim Result". Note that white space means any white > space characters, including line breaks, tabs, etc. > > In your example, we returned the line previous to "Dim Result as Short" as > well as "Dim Result" because that empty line had a whitespace (line break) > at the beginning of the line. This was then followed by the white space > (tab) at the beginning of the "Dim Result" line. Because of the "^:Wh*", > we wanted zero or more occurances of a white space at the beginning of the > line. Therefore, both lines were selected. > > Also, it should be noted that in VS Find/Replace, we use our own version of > regular expressions. The Visual Studio Expression syntax can be found > under the help topic > ms-help://MS.VSCC.2003/MS.MSDNQTR.2003FEB.1033/vsintro7/html/vxgrfRegularExp > ressionsS.htm > (An easy way to get to this topic is click the expression builder button > (the right arrow located beside the Find What: combobox), then click on > "Complete character list") > > In the example above, since the white spaces before "Dim Result" was > actually just a tab, then ^[\t]*Dim Result would return ok, since we are > looking for zero or more occurances of a tab at the beginning of a line > followed by Dim Result. > > For ^[\s]*Dim Result, it returned "Specified Text wasn't found" because if > you look at our supported syntax, \s is not supported. In essense, you > were just looking for zero or more occurances of "s" at the beginning of > the line followed directly by Dim Result. > > For us, the solution is to explicitly state that you want the search to be > contained in a line. This can be done by the following regular expression > ^~(\n):Wh*Dim Result This statement says give me any match where the > beginning of the line doesn't contain a line break, contains zero or more > occurances of any white space, followed by Dim Result. > > Does that answer your question? Thanks very much for working with us so > closely.
Hi Lee,
Thanks for your feedback. I am glad that the question is clarified. If you have any more concerns on it, please feel free to post in the group. Best regards, Yanhong Huang Microsoft Community Support Get Secure! ¨C www.microsoft.com/security This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
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