1 Correct answer
It would be absolutely possible to do this one with a lookbehind, but that's not how I started figuring this one out. Can you go into more detail on what you're trying to do? It sounds like you simply want to replace all double chevron quotes with double quote marks. I'm not sure why you'd want to do it in multiple passes; it looks to me like it's best done in one pass.
The "followed by whatever except" bit is easy enough to do in GREP. If there are multiple nested quotes in a single paragrap
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10
Replies
It would be absolutely possible to do this one with a lookbehind, but that's not how I started figuring this one out. Can you go into more detail on what you're trying to do? It sounds like you simply want to replace all double chevron quotes with double quote marks. I'm not sure why you'd want to do it in multiple passes; it looks to me like it's best done in one pass.
The "followed by whatever except" bit is easy enough to do in GREP. If there are multiple nested quotes in a single paragraph, we'd need to have an expression that wasn't greedy; we want it to stop at the first double chevron close quote, right? The expression for that is
.+?So my "Find" expression would be
(«)(.+?)(«)(.+?)(»)(.+?)(»)and my "Change to" expression would be
"$2"$4"$6"because enclosing an expression in parentheses allows you to handle each parenthetical expression separately in the "Change to" field by addressing each group with a dollar sign. So this one replaces all the double chevron quotes with typographer's quotes. I would assume that you'd want the nested quotes to be single quotes, not double quotes, so I'd suggest this "Change to" expression instead:
"$2'$4'$6"which leads to this behavior:
If that's not what you're looking for, please do post again and fill us in. If you absolutely had to do one pass to replace the inner quotes, followed by another pass to replace the outer quotes, the first "Change to" expression would be more like
$1$2"$4"$6$7(Also I'm sure that my method is a bit of a brute force method, and there are far more elegant ways to pull it off.)
Hi @giognis4789300, you already have a good answer, but I was intrigued by this problem and decided to write a script to solve it. Here is what I came up with:
/**
* Example of "findChangeNestedBrackets" function:
* Find and process bracketing in selected text
* so that inner brackets (level 1 and above)
* are changed from chevrons to quote marks.
* Easily customizable via the `changer` function.
* @author m1b
* @discussion https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/grep-replace-quotation-marks-within-quotation-marks/m-p/14223446
*/
function main() {
/**
* This is the function that decides what
* to change, based on the char and level.
* Customize this to suit your needs.
* Important note: the closing level is 1
* higher than the opening level, so that
* level 1 opening matches with level 2 closing.
* @param {String} ch - a single character.
* @param {Number} level - the hierachical level of bracketing.
* @param {String} changeTo - private variable, only here for convenience.
*/
function changeNestedChevronsToQuotes(ch, level, changeTo) {
// opening bracket
if (ch == '«') {
if (level == 1) changeTo = '“';
else if (level == 2) changeTo = '‘';
return [changeTo, true];
}
// closing bracket
else if (ch == '»') {
if (level == 2) changeTo = '”';
else if (level == 3) changeTo = '’';
return [changeTo, false];
}
// this is just for our peace-of-mind:
if (level == 4) throw Error('We did not plan for level 4 nested brackets!');
}
findChangeNestedBrackets({
text: app.activeDocument.selection[0],
changer: changeNestedChevronsToQuotes,
showResults: true,
warnIfUnbalanced: true,
});
};
app.doScript(main, ScriptLanguage.JAVASCRIPT, undefined, UndoModes.ENTIRE_SCRIPT, 'Find/Change Brackets');
/**
* Perform find/change operation on characters used
* as opening/closing bracketing, with reference
* to their hierachical level.
*
* Example `changer` function:
*
* function (ch, level, changeTo) {
* // opening bracket
* if (ch == '«') {
* if (level == 1) changeTo = '“';
* else if (level == 2) changeTo = '‘';
* return [changeTo, true];
* }
* // closing bracket
* else if (ch == '»') {
* if (level - 1 == 1) changeTo = '”';
* else if (level - 1 == 2) changeTo = '’';
* return [changeTo, false];
* }
* // this is just for our peace-of-mind:
* if (level == 3) throw Error('We did not plan for level 3 nested brackets!');
* };
*
* The `changer` function returns:
* [changeToCharacter, risenToNewLevel],
* which is used to
* (a) know if the character needs changing
* (undefined means no change), and
* (b) know when the level needs to change.
*
* @author m1b
* @version 2023-11-10
* @param {Object} options
* @param {Text|TextFrame|Story} options.text - the text to find in.
* @param {Function} options.changer - a function that returns a replacement char, if any, given `ch` {char} and `level` {Number}.
* @param {Boolean} options.showResults - whether to show count of home many changes.
*/
function findChangeNestedBrackets(options) {
options = options || {};
var changer = options.changer,
text = options.text;
if (
changer == undefined
|| typeof changer !== 'function'
)
throw Error('findNestedBrackets: bad `changer` function supplied.');
if (
text == undefined
|| !text.hasOwnProperty('characters')
)
return [];
var contents = text.contents,
change,
counter = 0,
level = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < contents.length; i++) {
if (change = changer(contents[i], level)) {
if (change[0]) {
// make the change
text.characters[i].contents = change[0];
counter++;
}
// adjust level depending on whether
// change was opening or closing
level += change[1] === true ? 1 : -1;
}
}
// some messages for user:
if (
options.warnIfUnbalanced
&& level !== 0
)
alert(
'Warning\nBackets found in target text were unbalanced by ' + level
+ (level == 1
? ' level. This usually means a bracket was opened but never closed.'
: ' levels. This usually means ' + level + ' brackets were opened but never closed.'
)
);
if (options.showResults)
alert('Changed ' + counter + ' brackets.');
return counter;
};
As I wrote in the script documentation, you can customize the changes by editing the "changeNestedChevronsToQuotes" function.
Currently it is configured so that a first level of chevrons does nothing (where level is 0), and the next level of nested chevrons are changed to double-quotes, and then next level of nested chevrons are changed to single-quotes.
- Mark
P.S. @Joel Cherney, my middle name is literally HappyToTakeAnHourToScriptATwoMinuteJob. 🙂 What's wrong with me!
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