Re: Confused first time Kate user

On 07/02/2024 10:05 AM, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
 > On 02.07.2024 16:40, Richard Owlett wrote:
 >> I have a Debian machine with Kate Version 16.08.3 .
 >
 > Disclaimer: I don't know the Kate editor. But I know Regular
 > Expressions (RE).
 >
 >>
 >> I wish to do a search & replace using regular expressions.
 >> The "Help" menu has led to
 >> https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kate/katepart/regular-expressions.html
 >> and
 >> https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kate/katepart/regex-patterns.html
 >>
 >> I have strings of the form "XYZn" where n is one to three digits
 >> representing values of from 1 to 299. I wish to replace all occurrences
 >> with "abc".
 >
 > You may do that with simple patterns if you don't have, say,
 > strings like XYZ300 that shall be disregarded. Then the RE
 > may simply be  XYZ[0-9]+  meaning any string XYZ that is
 > followed by an arbitrary number of digits. Instead you can
 > specify digits as optional  XYZ[0-9][0-9]?[0-9]?  or define
 > the amount of digits (1-3) explicitly  XYZ[0-9]{1,3}  which
 > still allows numbers out of range 1..299 (say, 0, 300) or
 > undesired syntaxes like 00 or 000. - Not sure it matters in
 > your case. If it matters, you can define alternatives with
 > a bar-symbol, e.g.,  XYZ([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]|[1-2][0-9][0-9])
 > that you group with parenthesis.
 >
 > Where you put such regular expressions in your Kate editor
 > is known to you, I suppose?
 >
 >>
 >> The documents give essentially no examples.
 >
 > Regular expressions may first appear confusing, but the links
 > you posted actually has relevant examples.
 >
 >>
 >> Help please.
 >> TIA
 >
 > Hope that helps.
 >
 > Janis
 >
The GUI version of Kate accepts XYZ([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]|[1-2][0-9][0-9])
with no problem.
I tried out on a real world test.
I'm converting a paragraph formatted KJV Bible [1][2] to a pleasant reading experience for vision impaired seniors who have minimal computer experience.
The search string below worked fine {unexpectedly, didn't have to escape any non-alphanumeric characters}
     <span class="verse" id="V([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]|[1-2][0-9][0-9])"
Kate had other useful features. I recognized a HTML construct that I hadn't considered. I didn't show as a problem in my test browser. But could have in another scenario. It can also do things in command line mode. That should ease the task of processing >1000 text chapters automatically. Guess I spend the rest of the day reading documentation :}
Thank you
This is a resend - original reply did not appear
[1] KJV Cambridge Paragraph Bible <https://ebible.org/engkjvcpb/>
[2] <https://ebible.org/Scriptures/engkjvcpb_html.zip>