Wildcard search for <*>:

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ben Bullock
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Ben Bullock

I'm trying to do a wildcard search for a single word followed by a colon at
the beginning of a line.

Based on the following article, I thought the correct syntax for this would
be "<*>:".

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA010873051033.aspx

When I try to search for <*>: with wildcards switched on, I get a result
that I didn't expect, so that in something like

text text text
name: text text

the highlighting is from * to * as in the following:

*text text text
name:* text text

If I then search for the next one, I get

text *text text
name:* text text

and so on, until only the name is highlighted.

Searching for <*> seems to work but the colon after the > seems to mess
things up. <*:> doesn't match anything, and putting a \ before the colon
<*\:> doesn't work either.

You can see a screenshot here:

http://flickr.com/photos/bnz/1661669990/

[The Word version I have is in Japanese but I don't think this is a Japanese
Word-specific issue.]

What should I be doing?
 
Tp quote Graham Mayor
(http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm), "The asterisk is
a rather blunt weapon which must be used with care, as it can return a
lot of unwanted results."

The source of the problem is that the asterisk as a wildcard will
match as many characters as possible (sometimes called "greedy
matching"). In your experiments, it does indeed match the start of a
word at its beginning, and the end of a word at its end, but there's
nothing to force them to be in the _same_ word.

If you want a single word (with no spaces, punctuation, or digits)
followed by a colon, try searching for

[A-Za-z]{1,}:


I'm trying to do a wildcard search for a single word followed by a colon at
the beginning of a line.

Based on the following article, I thought the correct syntax for this would
be "<*>:".

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA010873051033.aspx

When I try to search for <*>: with wildcards switched on, I get a result
that I didn't expect, so that in something like

text text text
name: text text

the highlighting is from * to * as in the following:

*text text text
name:* text text

If I then search for the next one, I get

text *text text
name:* text text

and so on, until only the name is highlighted.

Searching for <*> seems to work but the colon after the > seems to mess
things up. <*:> doesn't match anything, and putting a \ before the colon
<*\:> doesn't work either.

You can see a screenshot here:

http://flickr.com/photos/bnz/1661669990/

[The Word version I have is in Japanese but I don't think this is a Japanese
Word-specific issue.]

What should I be doing?
Click to expand...
 
One additional thing you can do is to add ^13 at the beginning. ^13 is the
paragraph mark before the word, thus guaranteeing that you'll get just words
at the beginning of paragraphs. Or, if some line use the manual line break,
then use [^13^11] to match either kind of break. Done this way:

[^13^11]<*>:

now matches the first word at the beginning of a line/paragraph, followed by
a colon.

If you need to separate the line/paragraph break from the matched word
and/or colon, you can gain additional control by using:

([^13^11])(<*>)(:)

The line/paragraph break, word, and colon, can then be inserted into the
Replace with: text using:

\1 through \3.


--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com
Jay Freedman said:
Tp quote Graham Mayor
(http://www.gmayor.com/replace_using_wildcards.htm), "The asterisk is
a rather blunt weapon which must be used with care, as it can return a
lot of unwanted results."

The source of the problem is that the asterisk as a wildcard will
match as many characters as possible (sometimes called "greedy
matching"). In your experiments, it does indeed match the start of a
word at its beginning, and the end of a word at its end, but there's
nothing to force them to be in the _same_ word.

If you want a single word (with no spaces, punctuation, or digits)
followed by a colon, try searching for

[A-Za-z]{1,}:


I'm trying to do a wildcard search for a single word followed by a colon
at
the beginning of a line.

Based on the following article, I thought the correct syntax for this
would
be "<*>:".

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA010873051033.aspx

When I try to search for <*>: with wildcards switched on, I get a result
that I didn't expect, so that in something like

text text text
name: text text

the highlighting is from * to * as in the following:

*text text text
name:* text text

If I then search for the next one, I get

text *text text
name:* text text

and so on, until only the name is highlighted.

Searching for <*> seems to work but the colon after the > seems to mess
things up. <*:> doesn't match anything, and putting a \ before the colon
<*\:> doesn't work either.

You can see a screenshot here:

http://flickr.com/photos/bnz/1661669990/

[The Word version I have is in Japanese but I don't think this is a
Japanese
Word-specific issue.]

What should I be doing?
Click to expand...

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup
so all may benefit.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks to Herb Tyson and Jay Freedman for their answers. They were both very
useful.
 
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