Grep style shortest match (non-greedy) modifier ignored

I'm looking for confirmation on a possible bug that I've had problems with from InDesign version 5.5 up through the current CC 10.0.0.70.
What I'm trying to do is apply a character style via a grep rule in a paragraph style that matches everything up until the first colon in a block of text. The goal is to make that text bold. My grep rule is
.+?:
which means match one or more of any character, shortest match (non-greedy in grep terminology), followed by a colon. But the non-greedy modifier is being ignored and it's matching all of the text up until the last colon.
Here's a screen shot.
I've come up with a work around, but it would be nice for it to work properly. I'll report it as a bug if others confirm having the same problem. Thanks.

Thanks, Peter! I'm so used to the way grep works outside of InDesign that I forgot it would look for multiple instances within the paragraph. Technically, I did limit it to the first occurrence by using the question mark after the plus. (If you use any of the shortest match options in the drop-down menu that's what you get.)
But anchoring it to the beginning of the line with ^ did the trick.

Similar Messages

Attempting to create a GREP Style

I'm trying to make a GREP style for one of my paragraph styles, that will take the text from the beginning of a line until a colon and set a character style to it to bold that part.
Example:
Step 1: Take bread
Step 2: Take peanut butter
Step 3: Spread peanut butter on bread
I don't think I've been getting the syntax right. I've put ^\:~h and ^:~h into the 'to text' box, thinking this meant "Beginning of line until the character ':' and end" but neither of those have given me the results I want. Thanks in advance for the help!

Prismatus wrote:
Your response worked for me. I had tried using a wildcard before the ones I posted, but only put the . in, assuming it would cover more than just one character. I assume the +? covers all characters until the colon shows up, yes?
No, it's slightly more complicated than that (sorry!). By default, GREP is Greedy -- that means, if you use this
^.+:
GREP will think that the Any Character wildcard may be repeated as much as possible (that's the '+') before it needs to match the colon. What this means is that it will work just as you expected for
Step 1: This is a single line.
but will go out of its mind with this
Step 2: what will happen now? Well, contrary to what you were expecting, the entire line will be marked bold, all because everything up to the very last : will be matched!
The bold bits accurately shows what happens! Another example would be this:
\d+
which for a string of "123" will not match just the first digit, then the second, then the third, but all of them in a single long go. By default, GREP will grab as much as it possibly can.
Adding a question mark behind the "Repeat Me" character reverts this behavior to Non-Greedy behavior, and as such GREP will match as little as humanly possible:
\d+?
will then match just the "1" in "123".
Prismatus wrote:
I also like the be literal part, but I was wondering what you would have instead of \d if you had more than nine steps, or if you had substeps (1a, 1b, etc.).
That's just a case of adding more specifiers. To match one or more digits, you need this:
^Step \d+:
The '+', again, will allow a repetition of the "digit" code. In this case you don't have to add a question mark, because there is no way this could run out of control; first, it will only match digits, and second, these digits must be followed by a colon.
And if you may or may not have a single lowercase character following the digit (but still before the colon), you'd use the Any Lowercase Character code and the Zero or Once repetition specifier:
^Step \d+\l?:
(that's a lowercase ell.) You see the question mark meaning Something Entirely Different here? It's only a Non-Greedy marker when immediately following another repetition code, one of these
* (zero or more)
+ (once or more)
? (zero or once)
{4,8} (or any other set of numbers -- this is at least 4 and at most 8 times)
Uh, by the way, that makes this
abc??
a valid GREP. It will match "ab" or "abc", and then always select the shortest possible match of these two, which is then the "ab" one. ... Uh. I'm pretty sure this may be useful, some time in the future.

Grep Styles/Nested Styles from the end of the paragraph

Hi -
It appears that grep styles, and nested styles only allow you to apply styles from the beginning of the paragraph until the match.
I'd like to be able to apply styles from the END of the paragraph going back.
This would allow me to apply a non-breaking character style to the end of a paragraph to control "runts". You could make the last two words of a paragraph non breaking, or set a 15 character threshold.
This wouldn't work for all cases, but I'm working with centered, non-justified text, so it should work fine. If the feature were there.
I'm sure there are other things one could do with it as well.
There's a good discussion, and a MANUAL work-around on
http://pdsassoc.com/tipsCS/DeruntingParagraphs/index.html
Tom

I used your suggestion and reviewed the tutorial again.
Sometimes a missing piece of info drives you nuts.
Thanks again.
My clients will love this enhancement.
CS rocks.

GREP styles vs style sheets

I've got a lull at work and decided to work on my list and start to learn GREP so that I can use GREP styles.
The first one is a simple one: [[A-Z][A-Z]\S+?] This finds anything inside the brackets that starts with two capital letters. I know it works because I can find "[MT2]" in Find/Change.
OK, so I try it in some ID cs5 text with my first GREP style. It's failing the vast majority of the time. So I try lots of different things to see if I can find a pattern of what works and what doesn't. I've tried just the local formatting of a lone 'graf. I've tried making character and 'graf style sheets that incorporate a GREP style with the new character style, say "change type color to green".
I've looked through the forums and don't see others with my problem so it must be something about me or my document. I've used other documents to eliminate that variable. I've gone through the tutorials and David Blatner's stuff and don't see anything I'm doing differently.
When I format some text with a character and 'graf style sheet, it fails. BUT when I change the character style sheet of the source text to "[None]" it works. I've tried starting with text that is '[None]' and a 'graf style sheet of Normal, it works.
But starting with text styled with '[None]' character and a formal 'graf style sheet with a GREP Style, it fails. But when I change the 'graf style sheet to ]'Basic Paragraph]' it works.
I'm trying to find a pattern here, so to speak, and the only thing that has a chance to succeed is setting the character style sheet to 'None.' I just don't see than anyone who uses GREP styles has any problems like I do.
What do you reckon I'm overlooking? I've spent today trying to find what works and doesn't. As it is, I can't recommend this to my co-workers.

Rule of thumb for applying styles is basic formats for the entire paragraph should be defined in the paragraph style. If some selected bit of text needs to be formatted differnently, then you apply a character style (or, if you must, a local formatting override). With Nested Styles and GREP styles, ID has very powerful tools for applying character styles to selected text WITHIN the confines of the paragraph style definition. Most programs don't have that capability.
Should you apply the character syle as a nested or GREP style, or perhaps through Find/Change, or just by manually selecting text and applying the style? The answer to that will depend on a few variables. Should the particular string ALWAYS have a particular set of attributes, no matter what? Find/Change or local selection is the way to go. Character styles applied that way will survive even if the underlying paragraph style is changed to match the character style, then changed again. If the style should be applied to a string in a particular position in a paragraph, even if that position might move around a bit, a nested style is probably the way to go. If you want to make changes to text that matches a particular pattern, wherever it falls, when the surrounding text is a particular style, a GREP style is the answer.
GREP styles are very powerful, but they also use far more in terms of resources than applying a character style using other methods. I've seen reoprts of ID getting bogged down by too many GREP styles.

Grep Styles - Conflicting - "^" not working in lookbehind and more

Hi,
Still fighting my way in the jungle of paragraph grep styles.
In InDesign CS5 by the way.
I import text from DB and they all come in the same.
I need to use the same paragraph style to all paragraphs.
I really don't want to use find-change since that would mess up the xml holding the data.
Example-text explanation:
• All sizes are separated by ", - "
• …… = tab
• Not all rows have tab
• Sizes can be both numeric, letters, contain "/" and "-" and """ and " " (space) and yes indeed a "," comma!! (and every other idiotic combination you culd think of.)
• When only 2 posts in a row - should be separated by a ", " = (Comma-space)
• When more than 2 posts i a row - all posts but first and last should be hidden and separated by " - " (space-dash-space)
I have tried numerous combinations to get them all but they always conflict with each other.
Bugger!
I really shouldn't be impossible.
Is it possible in Paragraph grep styles to "catch" "any character but these" and kind of make a character-set like [!not this character] (= [!a|b|c] )
Is it possible to count the number of posts in a row? ( like... if more than 2 then hide...bla bla)
All sizes are separated by the same ", - " and sometimes I want to hide them, and somtimes I want to use one of them...
Is there any kind of "if-else" thing that can be used??
My original idea was to be able to catch them by using ^-combinations for beginning of paragraph and matching with tha linebreak and tab but it seems as if that don't always work when using positive or negative look-behind-ahead.
Oh, I'm blabbering. Sorry.
Any hints or pointers would be greatly appreciated.
/K
A) Got this - Original text
Same text but this is my Goal!
134/140, - 146/152, - 158/164……….299,-
134/140, - 146/152……….299,-
38, - 40, - 42, - 44, - 46……….399,-
38, - 40……….399,-
XS, - S, - M, - L, - XL……….399,-
XS, - S, - M, - L
XS, - M
XS, - S, - M, - L, - XL……….399,-
B 70, - 75, - 80, - 90, - 95……….199,-
B 70, - 75……….199,-
Medium-Wide 17”, - 17,5”……….995,-
Normal, - X-Wide……….999,-
16 mm 95, - 105, - 115, - 125, - 135, - 145…......99,-
16 mm 95, - 105……....99,-
134/140 - 158/164……….299,-
134/140, 146/152……….299,-
38 - 46……….399,-
38, 40……….399,-
XS - XL……….399,-
XS - L
XS, M
XS - XL……….399,-
B 70 - 95……….199,-
B 70, 75……….199,-
Medium-Wide 17”, 17,5”……….995,-
Normal, X-Wide……….999,-
16 mm 95 - 145…......99,-
16 mm 95, 105……....99,-
GrepStyle
Result wanted
,\s(?<=,\s)-\s.+(?=\s-)
Red undelined text will be hidden
(Got this)
134/140, - 146/152, - 158/164……….299,-
134/140, - 146/152……….299,-
38, - 40, - 42, - 44, - 46……….399,-
38, - 40……….399,-
XS, - S, - M, - L, - XL……….399,-
XS, - S, - M, - L
XS, - M
XS, - S, - M, - L, - XL……….399,-
B 70, - 75, - 80, - 90, - 95……….199,-
B 70, - 75……….199,-
Medium-Wide 17”, - 17,5”……….995,-
Normal, - X-Wide……….999,-
16 mm 95, - 105, - 115, - 125, - 135, - 145…......99,-
16 mm 95, - 105……....99,-
Need this to not conflict with other grep
blue underlined text needs to be hidden.
134/140, - 146/152, - 158/164……….299,-
134/140, - 146/152……….299,-
38, - 40, - 42, - 44, - 46……….399,-
38, - 40……….399,-
XS, - S, - M, - L, - XL……….399,-
XS, - S, - M, - L
XS, - M
XS, - S, - M, - L, - XL……….399,-
B 70, - 75, - 80, - 90, - 95……….199,-
B 70, - 75……….199,-
Medium-Wide 17”, - 17,5”……….995,-
Normal, - X-Wide……….999,-
16 mm 95, - 105, - 115, - 125, - 135, - 145…......99,-
16 mm 95, - 105……....99,-

There are error messages in the errorconsole. 
Firefox ignores the css rules because there is a syntax error at line 18: 
-->> table.heading {{background-image:url('barline.jpg'); 
please remove one of the opening brackets here 
You can go to Mozilla Developer Network to learn CSS. 
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/learn/css

Can somebody please help me creating a GREP style to reformat all the website adresses in my layout?

i've got this text from a client full with webadresses, some end with .com or .nl and i would like to highlight these adressess in bold and blue... i created a textstyle for it but the only thing i manage to get as a result is only the beginning of the website 'www.' i know it's possible but my skills are lacking in this departement...
can anyone help me getting started...?

Got it.
parentheses group #1 (the first | separated OR group): DOS path name, because a link can also refer to a file.
parentheses groups #2-5 (2nd OR group): e-mail address. Note: a "mailto://" prefix does not get matched here.
parentheses groups #6-13 (3rd OR group): URL, with a mandatory prefix "http://", "https://", "ftp://", and some more ("smb://", for example, is a Samba server file prefix). This also includes "ftps://", which was unknown to me but it appears it's perfectly valid.
It does not match the "mailto://" prefix for an e-mail address, but that's a moot point because the URL may not contain a @ character anyway.
This group correctly recognizes URLs that contain one or more hyphens in the base name (it also correctly rejects hyphens in the domain extension).
parentheses groups #14-15: (4th and last OR group): any non-prefixed URL, recognized solely on the basis of "any sequence of word characters, including the hyphen, followed by a period, optionally followed by some more characters (including both period and forward slash but excluding the hyphen), followed by at least two uppercase or lowercase letters.
This last one is responsible for (a) recognizing both "deadline.com" and "keefe-studios.com" as URLs, but (b) also rejecting "www.test-test.com" -- a hyphen in the 'center', fully optional, part.
Interestingly, there are more differences between the more exact 'match only with prefix' and the catch-all 'match about anything'. The former includes among the allowed characters: ':' (which, if I recall correctly, is only valid if a port number follows!), '#', '$', '%', '&', '?' and '+', so it matches a server query as well:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=enl&tbo=d&site=&source=hp&q=allowed+characters+in+url&oq=a llowed+characters+in+url
The latter does not include all of these characters, just letters, numbers, the hyphen (but not in all positions), and a period. It's probably because this is an unreliable way to match URLs after all -- hence the number of 'false hits'. These would only increase with even more allowed characters.
Lesson learned: to be assured "Create Hyperlinks Automatically" works as expected, make sure URLs are prefixed with "http://", and mail addresses are not prefixed with "mailto://". I didn't test if the function actually creates a correct e-mail link, but even if it does the prefix is not included in the clickable linked text.
(Also interestingly, it appears a GREP style, fed with this same query, doesn't stumble over the hyphen whereas a GREP find does. I don't think I'm capable of figuring that one out.)

Issue with the functions "add matching sets" and "modify matching sets"

Hi,
Though 'None' access permission is set for the functions 'Add Matching Sets' and 'Modify Matching Sets', they are accessible.
Is this a bug with the tool? or am I missing something?
Thanks in advance,
Madan

sorry, missed the version details.
I'm using MDM 5.5 SP6.

A GREP style not holding in CS4

Hi,
OK...I have been playing with a bunch of these GREP searches in CS4 where I can put them in as a stylesheet.
I have a character style that is called superscript, that automatically makes a ® superscript when it is typed, and that is working fine.
Then I added my lookahead for any TM or ® to add a 100 tracking in between the letter and the tm or ®. It does it if I have the type in the box and apply my style to the whole box. But, if I go in and make changes to the text, the ®-superscript automatically happens when I type a new one, but the tracking doesn't automatically happen. What's worse is, if I select the text and try to apply the style manually, it still doesn't not apply the 100 tracking. I have to make it a basic or none style and then re-apply the good one.
If it is in the GREP style of the paragraph style, shouldn't it do it dynamically?
Here is my image.
thanks!!
babs

The only object I know of you can create an InDesign and specify whether it prints or not in the PDF is a button. That would definitely NOT work with character styles.

Why doesn't Grep Styles with pos lookbehind work?

Hi,
I've posted another thread but I suppose I expected too much. I'll try to siplify this.
I have text where I want to catch underlined text:
Ponny, - Cob…….499,-
125, - 135, - 145, - 155…….399,-
140, - 150, - 160, - 170……..99,-
140, - 150………99,-
This paragraph grep style works for the above: ^\w+,\s-\s
However, when I want to use positive look-behind to just catch the " - " it stops working.
I have tried the following (none of them catches anything at all):
^(?<=\w+,)\s-\s
(?<=^\w+,)\s-\s
(?<=\w+,)\s-\s
Is there a limitation as to what syntax I can use in the lookbehind?
Pointers anyone?
/K

Hi Eugene,
Lookaheads and Lookbehinds don't work when using the repeat codes, like "+" or "*" or "?" etc.
I guessed there might be a limitation as to what works.
Eugene Tyson wrote:
Can you search for
\s-\s
And only search for underlined text in the
Find Format
area
No, sorry. The underline was olnly to indicate what I was trying to grep...
I don't want to use find-replace. I want to use the paragraph grep style.
/K

GREP STYLE, find/change

Hi!
My problem is..
I got these numbers:
17
31.9
32.9
15
in a table/cells. They need to have an .00 and 0 like this:
17.00
31.90
32.90
15.00
I can use this one for that: find: .$ change: $0.00 but then the numbers with 31.9 gets the .00 also.. 31.9.00
Any grep styles for that? multiple functions in the same style`?

A grep style can't change text for you; it can only apply a style to text that matches whatever pattern you set.
I don't think there any one search/replace that will get you where you want to go, but I was able to do it using two search and replace strings:
^\d+(?!\.)\b
$0.00
Finds any number of digits at the beginning of a line, that does NOT have a period following it, and returns the same number with ".00" appended.
^\d+\.\d\b
$00
Finds the remaining instances that have a period and only one digit after it, replaces it with the found text with "0" appended.
This will not touch anything that has a number that has two digits after the period, like 12.95.
Give it a try on a copy of your document, see if it does what you need. Depending on how your document is set up, and what other text is in it, you might also want to highlight the table (or just the relevant columns) and restrict the search to the selection rather than the whole document.

How to end grep styles?

Grep styles (in Paragraph style) is one of the fabulous option in indesign CS4, but i am having one doubt that do we have any option to end grep style at any particular instant like we have "END NESTED STYLE HERE" to end nested style.

You should state the full string to match in your GREP query. If it matches all, then all gets marked. If you don't want it to match all, you need to adjust the GREP query.
Alternatively, if you feel you have to "prematurely end" your character style, you can use a nested style instead.

Nested Line Style affecting my GREP style

Hello all.
I'm formatting a large book at the moment and am trying out a "runt fixer" to prevent bad sentence breaks in columns. So far I have created a character style that only applies the "no-break" attribute, and have two GREP styles - one looking for a space and 8 characters or less before a full-stop, exclamation mark or question mark; and another looking for the 8 characters or less then a space after a full-stop, exclamation point or question mark. The codes are:
\s.{1,8}[.!?]
and
(?<=[.?!]\s).{1,8}\s
It works... nearly. It has issues when fullstops are used in numbers such as displaying currency, dates... but largely works for the text.
The problem occurs when I go to the Drop Caps and Nested Styles feature, and use the "New Line Style" - in this instance it was used at the beginning of chapters to make the first line smallcaps. Instead, something strange happened to the second GREP style - it no longer worked.
In case I'm not explaining myself properly, i've uploaded a sample of what is going on here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55743036/runt-issue.idml
The first page is OK, but the second page displays the fault. I've colorised the GREPs so that it is clear what is not breaking at the end of a sentence and what is not breaking at the start of a sentence.
Has anyone experienced this before or can tell me what is going on? it is my error or is it a bug?
Colin

@Colin – I thought, I could make it work, if I introduce another GREP Style BEFORE the one that is not working: A GREP Style, that is doing nothing (applying the character style "[None]" to a character like "§" that is simply not in the text. Did not work.
Another attempt with InDesign CS5.5 OSX 10.6.8: I made a new paragraph style BASED ON the one that is not working. Changed nothing in that new one, just let it be based on the not working one.
Now: THAT IS FINALLY WORKING! But in a different way I expected…
"Will work" is based on "not working".
Here all GREP Styles used in "Will work":
Uwe

GREP style as part of paragraph style

I'm wanting to create a GREP style that uses a character style. Whenever certain words (No class) appear followed by dates. Sometimes it is a single date and sometimes more than one date. For example:
No class 7/11.
No class 7/11-8/11.
What I have so far is:
No class \d+.
This works okay through the words "No class" and the first digit, but not for the whole sentence. I've tried different combinations but nothing that works correctly.
Can anyone help?

Peter,
I so much appreciate your help with this. Your explanation makes it understandable. But there is still a mystery.
The GREP for Instructor: Instructor Name works fine. The GREP for the date sentence is not working. Instead of the date sentence becoming italic, it matches the first part of the paragraph. This is what the GREP looks like:
This is what the paragraph looks like with the GREP applied:
It should look like this:
In a separate issue in another paragraph, which is a heading paragraph, I have a similar situation. The headings are bold, some headings list ages, and some list ages AND whether parental participation is required. I thought I could extrapolate from the information you've given me to fix this paragraph as well. I've tried different combinations, but so far haven't gotten it to work. The paragraph looks like this:
But it needs to look like this (bold paragraph with ages in regular,and parent requirement in italic):
The heading doesn't always have an age requirement, and doesn't always require parental participation.
The catalog is quite long, so if there is a way to fix these two types of paragraphs, it would save a ton of time.

Regular Expressions: Greedy vs Non-Greedy

Guys, I just can't explain and find any explanation in the doc for such a behaviour:
SQL> with t as (select 'the 1 january of the year 2007' str from dual)
2 select regexp_substr(str,'.*?[[:digit:]][ ][[:alpha:]]+.*') substr1,
3         regexp_substr(str,'.*?[[:digit:]][ ][[:alpha:]]+.*$') substr2
4 from t
5 /
SUBSTR1       SUBSTR2
the 1 january the 1 january of the year 2007
SQLthe first part of a pattern is '.*?' - non-greedy seacrh for combination of any symbols.
It is followed by 1 digit, then 1 space then a consequent greedy combination of alpha characters
an the last part of the mask is '.*' in the first case and '.*$' in the second.
The only difference in '$' in the end.
AFAIK '.*' in the first case should stand for GREEDY search of a combination of any symbols.
So in my opinion if '.*' stands in the end of the mask it should be equivalent to '.*$',
but somehow it becomes NON-GREEDY.
I just can't explain why.
Can anyone help?
Thanks.
PS
SQL> select * from v$version;
BANNER
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Prod
PL/SQL Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production
CORE     10.2.0.1.0     Production
TNS for 32-bit Windows: Version 10.2.0.1.0 - Production
NLSRTL Version 10.2.0.1.0 - Production
SQL

This doesn't make any sense at all to me either. The only thing I did find that could explain it is at:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B14117_01/server.101/b10759/functions116.htm#SQLRF06303
match_parameter is a text literal that lets you change the default matching behavior of the function. You can specify one or more of the following values for match_parameter:
'n' allows the period (.), which is the match-any-character character, to match the newline character. If you omit this parameter, the period does not match the newline character.
So maybe since the . doesn't match newline and $ does?

Non-greedy regular expression search/replace

i want to be able to do non-greedy regular expressions as
dreamweaver defaults to greedy and eats all of the match it can
match.
Is there an add-on to add a checkbox or soemthing in the
Search and Replace Dialog for non-greedyness?
i guess i could throw something in there to match some simple
expressions like...
text to search n' replace:
$Query .= ", dateReceived='".addslashes($dateReceived)."'" .
", dateReleased='".addslashes($dateReleased)."'";
Instead of using this now
Find: '"\.addslashes$\$([^$]*)\)\."'
Replace: ". dateInsert($$1) ."
i want to just use this wihout it getting greedy with the .*
Find: '"\.addslashes$\$(.*)$\."'
Replace: ". dateInsert($$1) ."

In regular expression, if you want the .* to not be greedy
you add a '?' after so yo you have '.*?'
Find: '".addslashes($dateReleased)."'
Hope that help,
Chris
Adobe Dreamweaver Engineering

Grep style shortest match (non-greedy) modifier ignored

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