White space(s) code in FindChangeByList script.

[Johan23342354hbx9]

Hello all. 

After more than a decade of using InDesign I found out about the Find change by list script. 🙂

New as I am to this, and with no experiece of encodig etc, I could not find out the codes for "Insert white space" (for example: Hair space)

Where can I find the right codes for white space, characters etc? 

Thankful for any help with this. 

/ J

[m1b]

Hi @Johan23342354hbx9, I don't know that script, but if it is using ExtendScript literal strings or RegExp to do the find/change, you can insert unicode directly by prefixing the unicode with \u. You can find the unicodes for various characters by searching internet, eg. here are unicode spaces. So a hair space would look like this:

var myString = 'The quick brown\u200Afox jumps.';
var myRegExp = /over the\u200Alazy dog/i;

However if the script is using Indesign's findGrep function it is slightly different. You must give it a string that Indesign will interpret as a regular expression. eg. "The quick brown\\x{200A}fox." The double backslash is to escape the single backslash.

- Mark

[Manan Joshi]

An example findchange string using the list given by @m1b 

grep {findWhat:"\\x{2003}"} {changeTo:"\\x{200A}"} {includeFootnotes:true, includeMasterPages:true, includeHiddenLayers:true, wholeWord:false}

For text search the syntax to use the unicode is to enclose the unicode value between <>

So an example of it would be <2003>

-Manan

[Manan Joshi · Accepted solution]

For InDesign specific special character list and their unicode values, see the following link

https://www.indiscripts.com/blog/public/data/idcs4-special-characters/en_InDesignCS4-CS5-SpecialChar...

Another useful trick is to open the Info Panel, then select the character you need to know the unicode of. The unicode is displayed on the panel.

-Manan

[m1b]

Fantastic resource and Info panel tip! Thanks!

[Johan23342354hbx9]

Great resource! Thanks !

[brianp311]

In addition to the other resources listed, in your Find Change panel, under Find What, there's a little arrow. There are a number of dropdowns options there including all the different white space options. You can select those and have the panel populate with the codes. Just be sure to escape backslashes with another backslash in the script code. (ie \\t for tab stop)