Find character in middle of paragraph, but not at beginning

[RuneEilertsen]

Hi!

I'm trying to to figure out how to change the location "Beginning of paragraph" to do the opposite. I need to find en-dashes that are not at the beginning of a paragraph. I've tried ^[^]-|– but its not working as I was hoping.

Rune

[Willi Adelberger]

I would search for word characters, could be comma or other dots, followed by space and then the dash. I do it always for corrections to the German dash (n-dash, Gedankenstrich, is not allowed at the beginning of a line.)

[RuneEilertsen]

Thanks for your suggestion.

I did try to search for "any word character->any white space->en-dash|hyphen" but for some strange reason that search also included en-dashes at the beginning of paragraph. I think it is because it includes the last character of the previous paragraph??

Rune

[FRIdNGE · Accepted solution]

Hi,

\V\K(-|–)

Best,

Michel, from FRIdNGE

[RuneEilertsen]

Thanks!

This worked!

Rune

[FRIdNGE]

You doubted!? …

Best,

Michel

[RuneEilertsen]

Hehe - not at all:)

Can I ask you what \V and \K is searching for?

[FRIdNGE]

\K is a lookbehind, \V is not a vertical space [especially including a carriage-return].

So, the regex searches all en-dash preceded by something that is not a … carriage-return!

That means that it can't find an en-dash at the beginning of a para because the previous glyph will be …

[ I let you answer to see if you have understood! -- I know this kind of regex is really loony!  ]

Best,

Michel

[RuneEilertsen]

Ok, it makes totally sense. Thanks again.

Rune

[FRIdNGE]

Some could tell this other Grep code is better because clearer:

(?<!\v)(-|–)

Explanation: an en-dash that is not preceded by … a carriage-return!

… But it's not true [more greedy!]! 

As you see, Grep is truly simple to play!

Have a good day!

Best,

Michel