Simple GREP query with Groups not working as expected.

[mazdaspeed]

I like having a hair space ahead of my footnote reference numbers when there is no period, comma or other terminator ahead of it. I'm presently working with almost 600 footnotes and this should be an easy matter.

I'm using the following GREP query and the results are totally unexpected (I get Group 1, twice) when calling for return of both Group 1 and Group 2, as follows:

If I call for just Group 2 and the hair space I get what is expected:

If I call for Group 2, twice, I get a really weird outcome that includes Group 1:

Anyone have a thought?

 

[Barb Binder]

Gotta love GREP but there's a feature for that... 😊

~Barb

[mazdaspeed]

Barb, the particular funtion you are pointing out is for the footnote text, not the reference number in the body text (unless I'm missing something). It's also an all-or-none solution. I don't want to add space when commas and periods preceed the footnote. Hence, what I want to do would not be a reasonable feature request.

My experience is based in regex and this is no-brainer within html. I think Manan has something I can work with. I really do appreciate your fast respons, though!

[mazdaspeed]

Dang, I could only see the bottom half of the screenshot when I replied, so I was mistaken about locatiuon. My bad. Still, all-or-nothing...

[Manan Joshi · Accepted solution]

With respect to Grep, you can't use replace a footnote marker with itself, it cause issues. So to identify a footnote marker for your Grep, use positive lookahead. So your Grep expression would be something like

Find What :- ([\l\u])(?=~F)

So now you just have the match before the footnote reference in $1, change it to whatever you need.

Change To:- $1~|

-Manan

[mazdaspeed]

I will give this a try. Thanks, Manan.

[mazdaspeed]

Funny thing. I went through and did them manually, before I read your reply, and ended up catching other issues I may have missed. Now I ran your query and found some instances I missed when I ran through them, manually.

Works perfect. Thanks again!