Selecting multiple paragraphs using GREP

[tomottoe]

Hi.

I have many passages of text in a manuscript tagged for lists: #BL# at the beginning of the first line and #EBL# at the end of the last line, with varying multiple lines between. I want to select all the text between the tags and apply a style.

#BL#This is the start of the list and can be followed by 2 or more paragraphs of text.

. . .

This is the last line of the list and can have multiple sentences before the last sentence ends here.#EBL#

I tried #BL#[^#EBL]+

which sometimes completely ignores a list and other times selects only part of the list.

Any help? Thanks!

[winterm · Accepted solution]

Hm, [^#EBL] won’t work as you may expect...

I would do it in 3 simple steps. Find/Replace #BL# and #EBL# to some single chars (unique in your text). Like this:

1. #BL# change to <

2. #EBL# change to >

3. Then this regex should do the trick:

<\K.+[^>]+

(will work in CS6 and CC versions)

[FRIdNGE]

Hmm! …

… If you wanna apply the "Touched" para style [just as sample], a single shot will be enough, even if you're not a good shooter!

Find:  (?s)\#BL\#(.+?)\#EBL\#

Replace by:  $1

Replace by format: Touched (para style)

Best,

Michel, for FRIdNGE

[jctremblay]

No need to escape the #

(?s)#BL#(.+?)#EBL#

[FRIdNGE]

Aha! Totally right! Thanks JC! 

Best,

Michel

[tomottoe]

Thanks!! This will save my bacon going forward.