GREP search: change style within parentheses

[Fritz Hansen]

I have a document that includes long lists of names, many of which are followed by words in parentheses that need to have a certain character style applied (but the parentheses remain unstyled). Several years ago I asked if there is a GREP search that can accomplish this, and I received an answer from Nigel Chapman that worked:

Because you want to exclude the brackets from the matched string, you need to use look-behind and look-ahead. It isn't pretty. Search for

(?<=\()[^)]+(?=\))

Set the replacement to

$0

and set the Change Format to your character style.

It doesn't seem to be working now. Should this still accomplish what I need, or is there a change to the Find or Change To strings I need to make?

Mac OS 12.4

InDesign 17.3

Thanks

[brian_p_dts · Accepted solution]

You don't need the $0. You can leave the ChangeTo field blank. But this code with an extra escape in the negative expression line works [^\)]. Can you provide a sample line where that doesn't work? 

Find:

(?<=\()[^\)]+(?=\))

 Change Format: Your character style

[Fritz Hansen]

Thanks! Works as expected.

[Peter Kahrel · Accepted solution]

As Brian mentioned the $) isn't necessary. But why your expression doesn't work isn't clear, it works fine over here (with or without the escape that Brian mentioned).

But the expression uses two ways to stop at the first closing parenthesis, one is good enough. You can use either of these two:

(?<=\()[^)]+

(?<=\().+?(?=\))

In the first one,  [^)]+ stands for 'while not )', and in the second one,  .+?(?=\)) stands for 'repeat until the first next )'.

P.

[Fritz Hansen]

Thanks! Works as expected as well. A big relief. Hundreds of faculty names with (department name) that has to be italicized. 

[edwardc52369671]

Hello, I've found this thread as I'm trying to write a Grep which changes the text between two sets of double slashes.

i.e. it be word 'text' in this case

//TEXT//

I've been struggling to adapt the grep from this thread. It seems more complicated due to the double charcater, and the fact the opening and closing are the same characters.

Any help very appreciated

Many Thanks

[Peter Kahrel]

Try this: 

//\K.+?(?=//)

[edwardc52369671]

Thanks so much! It worked perfectly - really appreciate you taking the time to reply

[brian_p_dts]

This should work for a find. Change to whatever you want to change the text to. 

(?<=//).+?(?=//)

[Peter Kahrel]

Great minds think alike!

[brian_p_dts]

I'm old school and never picked up on the use of \K

What would be the time when \K is better or different than positive lookbehind, out of curiosity. It's a gap in my GREP knowledge.

[Peter Kahrel]

(?<=. . .) doesn't allow variable-length matches, \K does. So ^\d+\K works, but (?<=^\d+) does not.

[edwardc52369671]

Out of interest, is there a variation which can also remove the two sets of // // so just the word in between them remains?

I'm still trying to get my head around Grep

Again - Many Thanks

[Peter Kahrel]

Yes. Do this:

Find what: //(.+?)//

Change to: $1

Change format: Italics

[edwardc52369671]

Thank you! This is brilliant - much appreciated

[Jaydude-wb]

Great, these examples! Does anyone know how to include the parentheses in the GREP style?

[Jaydude-wb]

Found it:

(?=\().+?(?<=\))