Anybody know why this grep regex doesn't work?

[Thomas_Calvin]

I'm trying to find periods with zero or more whitespace characters after them. Everything I can find says this should work, but it doesn't work for strings that have no whitespace (looking for a capital letter followed by a period):

var capitalExpression = "^[A-Z]\\.\\s*";

This finds

A. Start the engine.

but not

A.Start the engine.

[Barb Binder]

How about:

\u\.\s*

~Barb

[Barb Binder]

Oh darn. I focused on your GREP expression as per your title, and missed that you need this included in a script. Not sure that my answer will be helpful. Sorry!

~Barb

[Thomas_Calvin]

I appreciate it Barb! I have a working script and a mostly-working expression. But the asterisk doesn't work.

[Thomas_Calvin]

It turns out that the UXP dev tool wasn't reloading the script when saved, despite "watch" being on. Restarting everything fixed it and the asterisk works fine!

[brian_p_dts]

The ens should be \\s+? I think

[Thomas_Calvin]

Thanks for the reply. Everything I've looked at says + means "one or more" not zero or more.

[Joel Cherney · Accepted solution]

I don't think that the problem is with your query. Maybe something else is going on somewhere else in your script? Your query seems to work for me, at least when I put it in the simplest script possible:

[Thomas_Calvin]

Yep, thanks. It turns out that it works fine for me too. The UXP developer tool neglected to reload the source after I changed and saved it, despite "watch" being on. Usually this works fine. I noticed the wrong expression being used when stepping through with the debugger.

[Eugene Tyson]

Noticed you tagged 'UXP Scripting' - are you writing a UXP script? 

It might need to be something like this

/^[A-Z]\.\s*/

[Thomas_Calvin]

It is a UXP script. A plug-in, in fact.

[rob day · Accepted solution]

Hi @Thomas_Calvin , It’s also working for me with ExtendScript. Here it is via a function:

grepSearch("^[A-Z]\\.\\s*", "B. ")

/**
* Document Grep find and change 
* @ param f the find grep string 
* @ param c the change grep string
* @ return void 
*/
function grepSearch(f,c){
    app.findGrepPreferences = app.changeGrepPreferences = app.findChangeGrepOptions = null;
    app.findChangeGrepOptions.properties = app.findChangeGrepOptions.properties = {includeFootnotes:true, includeHiddenLayers:true, includeMasterPages:true, wholeWord:false}  
    app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = f;
    app.changeGrepPreferences.changeTo = c;
    app.activeDocument.changeGrep( true )
}

[Thomas_Calvin]

Thanks Rob.

In the end, it works fine. The UXP developer tool did not pick up my source-code changes for some reason (despite "watch" being on), and was running an old version that didn't have the asterisk.

[Peter Kahrel]

Yes, you found out the hard way that the UXP developer tool can't save changes you made to the code. It's pretty awful, but that's the way it is.

[Thomas_Calvin]

Actually, it usually does reload immediately after I save the file in VS Code. This is the first time I've seen it fail at that.

The really offensive part is the fake "editor" the UXP tool presents and allows you to "edit" and "save" the file in. This is mind-boggling. Why do they deliberately waste customers' time with this? There's no excuse for it.

[Peter Kahrel]

Join the crowds. Here you can vent your ire:

https://forums.creativeclouddeveloper.com/c/uxp-developer-tool/65

And here you can log bugs and feature requests:

https://indesign.uservoice.com