How to insert text at specific position?

Question

In a nutshell, i know exactly where my tab is by using indexOf to get the position of the tab I want.

The problem is I simply cannot find a way to replace the text at that point. Id like to replace "/t" (tab) with "~<\t" (thin space + tab).

Ive tried slicing and joining but it removes all my anchored images.

Ive tried selecting the tab location then using app.selection[0].changeGrep to replace the text but it only works on the first occurance. I'm stumped, what am I missing here?

var myFrames = app.activeDocument.textFrames;
//loop through frames
for (i=0; i < myFrames.length; i++) {
         
    // get all paragraphs
    var myParagraphs = myFrames.paragraphs.everyItem().getElements();
    //loop through paragraphs
    for (n=0; n < myParagraphs.length; n++) {
        //get contents of paragraph
        var myLine = myParagraphs.contents;
        //find first tab
        var tablocation=myLine.indexOf('\t');
        //find next tab
        var tablocation=myLine.indexOf('\t', tablocation+1);
        //select this second tab
        myParagraphs.characters.itemByRange(tablocation,tablocation).select(SelectionOptions.REPLACE_WITH);
        // if tablocation is -1 skip it
        if (tablocation > 1 ) {
            app.findGrepPreferences = app.changeGrepPreferences = null;  
            app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = "\\t";
            app.changeGrepPreferences.changeTo= "~<\\t";
            app.selection[0].changeGrep();
        }
    }
}

Laubender · Accepted Answer

You can find the tab character by e.g. using GREP Find.When found the thing that is found is a text. And text has insertion points.resultsByGREPFind.insertionPoints[0].contents = SpecialCharacters.THIN_SPACE ;Be careful when assigning new contents.Do that in reverse order ( from back to forth ) inside a story.Regards,Uwe

Marc Autret · Answer

Hi spicyDoge,As Uwe wrote, insertionPoints is the way to go. I would add three basic ideas:Work on Stories rather than TextFrames (unless you really know what you're doing.) Stories allow to access and manage overset text.Do not `select` things that don't require to be selected. Just send the right command to the destination object.Avoid both GREP and SpecialCharacters API when the task can be done by simple JS string operations. In your example, the THIN SPACE is just "\u2009".Here is a possible implementation:// YOUR SETTINGSconst SEARCH = '	'; // TABconst PREFIX = '\u2009'; // THIN SPACEvar from = app.activeDocument.stories.everyItem(), a = from.paragraphs.everyItem().texts.everyItem().getElements(), t,s,p;while( t=a.pop() ){ // Get the location of the 2nd match in that paragraph. // --- p = (s=t.contents).indexOf(SEARCH); if( -1 == p ) continue; p = s.indexOf(SEARCH, 1+p); if( -1 == p ) continue;  // No need to redo what is already done! // --- if( s.charAt(p-1) == PREFIX ) continue; // Prepend the prefix. // --- t.insertionPoints.contents = PREFIX;}@+Marc

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