Discretionary line breaks are ignored in Grep searches?

Question

Hi,

I have some text with discretionary line breaks in it. When I do a grep search, it ignores the breaks as characters.

For example, text is "a<discretionary_line_break>b"

Grep is "ab"

The text containing the break will be found, but I don't want to find it... only exact "ab" matches.

Do you have any ideas of how to find matches that do not have the break char? (~k)

Thanks!

Christopher

David Popham · Accepted Answer

Hi Christopher,

That's interesting how InDesign ignores the discretionary line break, but not helpful in your case.

However, you can find "a + discretionary line break + b", so that does allow a workaround of that consists of three Find/Change operations instead of one, where you temporarily alter those instances, then change them back after completing your intended search.

First Find/Change operation

Find: a~kb
Change: <a|b> (Note: you can use whatever pattern you like here, as long as it's something that doesn't naturally occur in your content. This is only a suggestion.)

Second Find/Change operation

Perform your regular "ab" search

Third Find/Change operation

Find: <a\|b>
Change: a~kb

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