LiveCode Forums.

I gave this the other day as an example of how to replace any number or length of strings of "/" with "//":
So if you had:

"a/a//a///a//////////////a"

You would get "a//a//a//a//a". Works like a charm.

But I all of a sudden do not understand my own gadget. In other words, if I am running this handler on, say, "a/a/", shouldn't I get: "a//". The function should match the wildcard string "/...../" (the string fragment "/a/", char 2 to 4) and return "//" in its place. That is, the first "a" appended to "//". At least that is how I read the explanation of the wildcard "*" in the dictionary entry of the "filter" command. Is replaceText different? I doubt it.

Mr Thierry?

Craig Newman

EDIT, I had thought that the "/" character itself was an issue, since it is an escape char in PCRE expressions, but it makes no difference if you substitute, say, "x". "AxAxxAxxxxxxxA" yields "AxxAxxAxxA".

The correct code is:

MaxV.

put replaceText(fld 3,"\/*\/","//") into fld 4

That works as well. So is mine deficient in syntax, though it works fine in practice?

After reading up a bit on regular expressions, I see that the implementation of "*" really refers to "0 or more of the preceding char", and not so much, as the dictionary says, "0 or more of any char". I think this clears up what I was wondering about. The dictionary entry (under "filter") has mislead me for quite a while.

Craig

Hi Craig,
try this site: http://www.regexr.com/
It saved my life many times about regular expressions.

Another useful resource is the RegEx Builder plugin included in the LiveCode installation - in the IDE see Development->Plugins->RegEx Builder.

Richard.

And I just discovered that this was authored by none other than Frederic Rinaldi.

The great...

Craig