GREP expression to italicize not working with forced line break

[dane73948575]

I am working on a variable data (XMPie) job, and the data has <i>...</i> tags in it which I am using to italicize text in the middle of a paragraph. I am using the grep expression:  (?<=<i>).*(?=</i>) to locate the tags and italicize the content between them. It works great, except when a forced line break happens between the tags. When that happens this grep expression stops working. Any thoughts on how I can fix this?

[Mike Witherell]

Have you tried:

(?<=<i>).*\n?(?=</i>)

[dane73948575]

Yes. Just did. Does not work. Here is the story text...

<i>“Stay close to my light. You don’t want to get lost on the rocks.”

—Fejenar, Silundi lullmage</i>

The forced line break happens after the close quote, and before the em-dash. Everything works great if the forced line break isn't in there. Add it, and the grep expression isn't found.

[Mike Witherell]

Hmmm. Did you try:

(?<=<i>).*\R?(?=</i>)

[dane73948575]

Yes, actually, I tried that immediately following your suggestion:  (?<=<i>).*\n?(?=</i>)

Also does not work. 😞

[Manan Joshi]

How about 

(?<=<i>).*?\R*.*?(?=</i>)

-Manan

[dane73948575]

YES!!! That worked!

Thank you!

[Jean-Claude Tremblay]

Use single line mode:
(?s)(?<=<i>).*?(?=</i>)

Or this:

(?<=<i>)(.*?\n?)*(?=</i>)

[FRIdNGE · Accepted solution]

<i>\K\X*?(?=</i>)

(^/)  The Jedi

[Jean-Claude Tremblay]

Shorter is better! 🙂 

[FRIdNGE]

… More precisely:

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate." [Ockham, 1319]

😉

[Mike Witherell]

What does \X refer to/define as? Is it for everything?

[Jean-Claude Tremblay]

For \X see this > 

https://www.regular-expressions.info/unicode.html#grapheme