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Inspiring
May 9, 2026
Answered

regular expression with brackets / comma and space

Hello,

With the help of ​@Winfried Reng , for a text selection I could use the Find/change function with “regular expression” in order to add brackets around the text selection. 

But now, inside this “regular expression” I would like to delete also the comma before this text selection.

So, I would like to select from the comma to the text selection (by example here :  , soprano) and in a single regular expression, do  two things : delete the comma and add brackets around the text selection.

How to do it ?

 

    frameexpert
    frameexpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    May 9, 2026

    Find: , (\b.+\b)

    Change:  ($1)

    Make sure you remember the space at the beginning of the change.

    www.frameexpert.com

    6 replies

    frameexpert
    Community Expert
    frameexpertCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    May 9, 2026

    Find: , (\b.+\b)

    Change:  ($1)

    Make sure you remember the space at the beginning of the change.

    Translate
    www.frameexpert.com
    Inspiring
    May 9, 2026

    Hi ​@frameexpert 

    Your solution is working perfectly. In order to understand, why have you added “\b” inside the brackets ?

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    frameexpert
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    May 10, 2026

    \b indicates a word boundary. I want to just get a whole word. 

    .+ by itself could get any number of characters, including multiple words.

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    www.frameexpert.com
    Inspiring
    May 9, 2026

    Finally, I have just found the solution. Here is the modified regular expression I have used :

     

     

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    Inspiring
    May 9, 2026

    So, actually the regular expression is :

    Find :   (.+)

    Change : ($1)

     

    How to include also in the same regular expression the removing of the comma ?

    So if I select :    , soprano

    I will have :       (soprano)

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