RegEx pattern in chapters numbers

[karthikS]

Hi friends,

Please help on this.

I need to catch the below all chapters in the RegEx pattern.

I have try the this pattern - ((C|c)hapter(s)?[\s][0-9–]+[\s\,0-9&]*[and]{3,3}[\s0-9]+)|((C|c)hapter(s)?[\s][0-9–]+[\s\,0-9&]*) - not working properly.

Chapter 1

Chapters 1–6

Chapters 2 and 3

Chapters 2 & 3

Chapters 2, 3, 4

Chapters 2, 3, and 4

Chapters 2, 3 and 4

Thanks in Advance,

Karthik S

[m1b]

Hi @karthikS, here's what I came up with...

[Cc]hapters?\s\d+[,\-–\s]+(and|\&)?(\s?\d+[,\-–\s]+(and|\&)?)?\s?\d*

It's a bit of a brute force approach, but worked in my simple testing.

- Mark 

[karthikS]

Hi Mark,

Thank you very much! the above pattern wrong catch some cases. It's possible to ignore this case?

1. chapter 1 and ==> (ingnore [and space character])

2. chapter 1, ==> (ingnore [comma space character])

3. Chapters 2, 3 and ==> (ingnore [and space character])

4. Chapter 1 & ==> (ingnore [& space character])

Thanks in Advance,

Karthik S

[m1b · Accepted solution]

Right. How about this:

([Cc]hapter\s\d+|[Cc]hapters?\s([\d,\s\-–]|(and|\&)\s\d+)+)

- Mark 

[karthikS]

Hi Mark,

Thanks lot! very good job

Working fine

- karthik S

[m1b]

Great!

[Peter Kahrel · Accepted solution]

Nice one, Mark. For interest's sake, just a couple of small things. Your expression matches the space characters that follow numbers. And when you make optional whatever follows a single number, there's no need to repeat 'Chapter':

[Cc]hapters?\s\d+  // This is the minimum match
(((–|,\s|,?\s(&|and)\s)\d+)+)?   // Followed by any of these

 Peter

[m1b]

Excellent! Thanks Peter. 🙂

[Jean-Claude Tremblay]

Peter, look how beautiful your REGEX is !!  🙂

[Peter Kahrel]

Thank you, Jean-Claude. And what a lovely and instructive graphic! How did you do that?

[Jean-Claude Tremblay]

You can get a visual representation of any Regex from one of theses web site:
https://lehollandaisvolant.net/tout/tools/regex/
or
https://www.debuggex.com/

They are not fully compatible with all the InDesign GREP flavor, but for a visual guy like me I found them pretty useful.

[Peter Kahrel]

Very nice tools, thank you.

[m1b]

Thanks Jean-Claude, very helpful.