Is There A Way To Delete Unnecessary Hyphens?

[Grizzly]

In texts that I receive from others, there are often hyphenated words that appeared at the end of a line in their word processor or text editor, but which aren't at the end of a line for my configuration. It's easy to change "-ing" to "ing" for instance, but when a word such as "grabbing" is present, the break is between the two consonants, so I wind up with "grab-bing." If I could search for a sequence where a hyphen/dash is inserted between two consonants and replace with those same two consonants, then my world would be ever so much brighter.

Is there a way to do that without setting up a macro that would search for 20+ possible combinations and correcting these hyphens that way?

[ak47wong]

If I could search for a sequence where a hyphen/dash is inserted between two consonants and replace with those same two consonants, then my world would be ever so much brighter.

You can do a replace operation like so:

Find what: ([bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz])-([bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz])
Replace with: \1\2

Select the "Regular expression" option in the Replace dialog.
Clear the "Match case" option (if you select it, this will only work for lower-case and not upper-case consonants).
Select the "Use POSIX regular expression syntax" option in the Preferences dialog.

Andrew

[Grizzly]

If I could search for a sequence where a hyphen/dash is inserted between two consonants and replace with those same two consonants, then my world would be ever so much brighter.

You can do a replace operation like so:

Find what: ([bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz])-([bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz])
Replace with: \1\2

Select the "Regular expression" option in the Replace dialog.
Clear the "Match case" option (if you select it, this will only work for lower-case and not upper-case consonants).
Select the "Use POSIX regular expression syntax" option in the Preferences dialog.

Andrew

Thanks Andrew. I sincerely appreciate it, and I tried it out, but I need to match up only a "b" with a "b," a "c" with a "c", etc., etc. The expression above matched every possible instance of a hyphen between any two (random) consonants and deleted all the hyphens in the text file.
Thanks again for trying to help me out.

Bob

[ben_josephs]

Find what: ([bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz])-\1
Replace with: \1\1

[X] Regular expression

Replace All

[Bob Hansen]

ak47wong did provide you with a solution that matched exactly what you requested:

If I could search for a sequence where a hyphen/dash is inserted between two consonants

.

But now you have changed the specs.
Here is a structure that you can complete:

Search for (b)-(b)|(c)-(c)|(d)-(d)|.......|(z)-(z)
Replace with \1\2

Continue after "d" with the consonants as shown in the original solution.

Use the following settings:
-----------------------------------------
[X] Regular expression
Replace All
-----------------------------------------
Configure | Preferences | Editor
[X] Use POSIX regular expression syntax
-----------------------------------------

[Grizzly]

ak47wong did provide you with a solution that matched exactly what you requested:

If I could search for a sequence where a hyphen/dash is inserted between two consonants

.

But now you have changed the specs.
Here is a structure that you can complete:

Search for (b)-(b)|(c)-(c)|(d)-(d)|.......|(z)-(z)
Replace with \1\2

Continue after "d" with the consonants as shown in the original solution.

I'm sorry for not accurately defining the problem. When I wrote, "If I could search for a sequence where a hyphen/dash is inserted between two consonants and replace with those same two consonants, then my world would be ever so much brighter." I thought I was being clear, but I guess not. Again, I apologize.

[Grizzly]

Find what: ([bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz])-\1
Replace with: \1\1

[X] Regular expression

Replace All

Thanks, Ben, I tried this but that sequence doesn't find anything. I do appreciate you replying though.

Please disregard my question. I'll solve the problem using another text editor.

[ben_josephs]

It does work. Try again.

Make sure you haven't got a space at the end of the search expression.

[Grizzly]

It does work. Try again.

Make sure you haven't got a space at the end of the search expression.

Thank you very much. It does work.

[Bob Hansen]

Ben's solution was neater than mine.

But I am curious if mine did not work for you?