Using Regular Expressions
Multi Find & Replace allows 'regular expressions' to be used as find phrases.
'RE2' regular expression syntax is supported by Multi Find & Replace.
(See RE2 syntax reference HERE).
What is a 'regular expression'?
Regular expressions, or 'regex', are made up of letters and symbols that precisely describe sets of character strings.
(If you want to learn how to code regular expressions, there are multiple sites with tutorials and examples to get you started.
Just do a search for 'regular expression tutorial')
For example, the following regular expression:
[[:alpha:]]+ing\b
finds all words that end with 'ing'.
How to use regular expressions
with Multi Find & Replace
with Multi Find & Replace
Multi Find & Replace allows you to enter lists of things to find and replace.
So there has to be some way for it to distinguish between ordinary phrases and regular expressions.
The way it does this is by use of a 'regular expression start character'. The following example explains this.
Say you want it to find all words ending in 'ing', as well as the words 'dog', 'cat' and 'mouse'.
To do this, you could enter the list as shown below. The '=' starting the first line means it is a regular expression.
NOTE 1: You should change this 'regular expression start character' if you need to find anything starting with '=' that is not a regular expression. OR you can even delete it if you aren't using regular expressions in a particular list.
NOTE 2: Regular expressions can contain commas. If so, change the 'Character to separate find/replace pairs' from a comma to something else that isn't in any find phrases.