Can't find character

gcotterl · Post by **gcotterl** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 9:27 pm

To find lines with a hyphen in position 97, I type:

^.{96}-

in the 'Find What' box, tick "Regular Expression" then click "Find All" but a dialog box is displayed saying "Cannot find regular expression: '^.{96}-'

(In the Preferences Edit menu. the "Use POSIX regular expression syntax" box is ticked).

Is there something "special" about searching for a hyphen?

ben_josephs · Post by **ben_josephs** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 9:45 pm

No, there isn't. Hyphen is "special" only when enclosed in square brackets.

Are you sure the character position is correct? Are you sure it's a hyphen?

gcotterl · Post by **gcotterl** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:12 pm

[b][size=18]CORRECTION[/size].[/b]

To find lines with a hyphen in position 93, I type:

^.{92}-

Here are some examples of my data:

009601705-4
008514276-7
008516513-7
009701511-4
009600208-9

(The character before each hyphen is in positon 92).

ben_josephs · Post by **ben_josephs** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:15 pm

You are using "Posix" regular expression syntax, aren't you?

gcotterl · Post by **gcotterl** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:18 pm

Yes, in the Preferences Edit menu. the "Use POSIX regular expression syntax" box is ticked

gcotterl · Post by **gcotterl** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:40 pm

I found the problem: At the beginning of each line, there was a tab character.

Subtracting the number of positions represented by the tab character from the number in my original regular expression resulted in successful "finds".