What is the tab character in REGEX?

[Barb Binder]

Hello FrameMaker friends:

I'm trying to find/change a series of spaces to tabs. The problem space always follows an R and four digits. For example,

R0000 followed by a space needs to be R0000 followed by a tab

So, this

locates the string but adds back in as R0000t and not R0000>.

Looking it up, \t is the REGEX character for a tab. What am I missing?

TIA,

~Barb

[frameexpert · Accepted solution]

Barb, try this for your tab: \x08

[Barb Binder]

Thank you, Rick! 😊

~Barb

[Stefan Gentz]

Might be a bug.

This works: $1\u0008

[Winfried Reng]

Hi Barb,

You can also copy a tab from your document and paste it into the Change field.

Then FrameMaker will replace with a tab correctly.

Best regards

Winfried

[K.Daube]

This is a very old problem, because FM uses x08 as TAB character, whereas the ANSI definition is x09.

It may well be that \t is implemented as x09...

At least in ExtendScript RegEx \t handles the TAB character of FM correctly.

My tests in 15.0.8.979 (aka 2019) show this:

• \t is found in text by Simple Search, Wildcards and Regular expression
• \t is not honoured in the replacement of the RegEx  Search which is IMHO a bug

Tests in 16.0.3.979 (aka 2020) show this:

• \t is found in text by Simple Search, Wildcards and Regular expression
• \t is not honoured in the replacement . It is even worse: finding Question and replacing this with $1\t yields the single character t !!! I have reported this as bug 11044

Edit

From the reported bug only the part concerning handling of the TAB (\t) is correct.

Ah, I really become old: $1 requires that the find expression contains at least one group ...

[Barb Binder]

Thanks, all! 😊