String find and replace

Hello,
I am trying to do the equivalent of a find and replace in a String object.
I want to be able to replace text in a String with a java variable so as an example, this is a line of the text file. The text has to be stored in an outside file and read in...
<b><center>Users name is #username#</center></b>
I have this String stored in, lets say, outputString and have the username stored in usernameString. I want to do something like:
String usernameString = "bob";
if ( //found the reference #username# in outputString ) {
//replace #username# with usernameString;
}So I end up with:
<b><center>Users name is Bob</center></b>
I have looked at the methods in String and it is possible to do this if I do a lot of complicated coding using Char[] arrays or index counts etc.
Does anyone have any idea how to do this easily?
Many Thanks

Use the StringBuffer class:
String usernameString = "bob";
if(outputString.indexOf("#username#") > -1) {
    outputString = new StringBuffer(outputString).replace(outputString.indexOf("#username#"),
                                                                                  "#username#".length(),
                                                                                  usernameString).toString();
}

Similar Messages

Efficient String find and Replace

I have a performance issue. I have an input String about 20KB in size. I also have a String array containing about 50 distinct elements. My assignment is to determine if any of the elements in the array are present in the input String and if they are, remove them from the input String.
The most straightforward solution would be to loop through the array, see if the input string contains that element and remove it from the string, using substring etc. However, i feel this is not a very efficient way of doing this. If there are say 50 elements in the array, the input String will be parsed 50 times. I was wondering if there is a better way to do this.
Any suggestions would be helpful. One idea I had was to use multithreading but not sure how helpful that would be.
Thanking you
Regards

In my view using Pattern and matcher would be more preffered. I have done one programe for you.
You can use that code for your use.
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class MatcherReplaceAllExample {
     public static void main(String args[]) {
          String[] myString = { "abc", "xyz", "aaa" };
          String InputString20KB = "abc darchana abc darchana xyz xyz , darchana ; aaa aaa ";
          for (int i = 0; i < myString.length; i++) {
               Pattern p = Pattern.compile(myString);
               //create the candidate String
               Matcher matcher = p.matcher(InputString20KB);
               InputString20KB = matcher.replaceAll("");
               System.out.println(InputString20KB);

Find and replace value in Delimited String

Hi All,
I have a requirement, where i need to find and replace values in delimited string.
For example, the string is "GL~1001~157747~FEB-13~CREDIT~A~N~USD~NULL~". The 4th column gives month and year. I need to replace it with previous month name. For example: "GL~1001~157747~JAN-13~CREDIT~A~N~USD~NULL~". I need to do same for last 12 months.
I thought of first devide the values and store it in variable and then after replacing it with required value, join it back.
I just wanted to know if there is any better way to do it?

for example (Assumption: the abbreviated month is the first occurance of 3 consecutive alphabetic charachters)
with testdata as (
select 'GL~1001~157747~FEB-13~CREDIT~A~N~USD~NULL~' str from dual
select
str
,regexp_substr(str, '[[:alpha:]]{3}') part
,to_date('01'||regexp_substr(str, '[[:alpha:]]{3}')||'2013', 'DDMONYYYY') part_date
,replace (str
         ,regexp_substr(str, '[[:alpha:]]{3}')
         ,to_char(add_months(to_date('01'||regexp_substr(str, '[[:alpha:]]{3}')||'2013', 'DDMONYYYY'),-1),'MON')
) res
from testdata
STR
PART
PART_DATE
RES
GL~1001~157747~FEB-13~CREDIT~A~N~USD~NULL~
FEB
02/01/2013
GL~1001~157747~JAN-13~CREDIT~A~N~USD~NULL~
with year included
with testdata as (
select 'GL~1001~157747~JAN-13~CREDIT~A~N~USD~NULL~' str from dual
select
str
,regexp_substr(str, '[[:alpha:]]{3}-\d{2}') part
,to_date(regexp_substr(str, '[[:alpha:]]{3}-\d{2}'), 'MON-YY') part_date
,replace (str
         ,regexp_substr(str, '[[:alpha:]]{3}-\d{2}')
         ,to_char(add_months(to_date(regexp_substr(str, '[[:alpha:]]{3}-\d{2}'), 'MON-YY'),-1),'MON-YY')
) res
from testdata
STR
PART
PART_DATE
RES
GL~1001~157747~JAN-13~CREDIT~A~N~USD~NULL~
JAN-13
01/01/2013
GL~1001~157747~DEC-12~CREDIT~A~N~USD~NULL~
Message was edited by: chris227 year included

[Forum FAQ] How to find and replace text strings in the shapes in Excel using Windows PowerShell

Windows PowerShell is a powerful command tool and we can use it for management and operations. In this article we introduce the detailed steps to use Windows PowerShell to find and replace test string in the
shapes in Excel Object.
Since the Excel.Application
is available for representing the entire Microsoft Excel application, we can invoke the relevant Properties and Methods to help us to
interact with Excel document.
The figure below is an excel file:
Figure 1.
You can use the PowerShell script below to list the text in the shapes and replace the text string to “text”:
$text = “text1”,”text2”,”text3”,”text3”
$Excel
= New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application
$Excel.visible = $true
$Workbook
= $Excel.workbooks.open("d:\shape.xlsx")
#Open the excel file
$Worksheet
= $Workbook.Worksheets.Item("shapes")
#Open the worksheet named "shapes"
$shape = $Worksheet.Shapes
# Get all the shapes
$i=0
# This number is used to replace the text in sequence as the variable “$text”
Foreach ($sh in $shape){
$sh.TextFrame.Characters().text
# Get the textbox in the shape
$sh.TextFrame.Characters().text =
$text[$i++]
#Change the value of the textbox in the shape one by one
$WorkBook.Save()
#Save workbook in excel
$WorkBook.Close()
#Close workbook in excel
[void]$excel.quit()
#Quit Excel
Before invoking the methods and properties, we can use the cmdlet “Get-Member” to list the available methods.
Besides, we can also find the documents about these methods and properties in MSDN:
Workbook.Worksheets Property (Excel):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff835542(v=office.15).aspx
Worksheet.Shapes Property:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff821817(v=office.15).aspx
Shape.TextFrame Property:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff839162(v=office.15).aspx
TextFrame.Characters Method (Excel):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff195027(v=office.15).aspx
Characters.Text Property (Excel):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff838596(v=office.15).aspx
After running the script above, we can see the changes in the figure below:
Figure 2.
Please click to vote if the post helps you. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Thank you for the information, but does this thread really need to be stuck to the top of the forum?
If there must be a sticky, I'd rather see a link to a page on the wiki that has links to all of these ForumFAQ posts.
EDIT: I see this is no longer stuck to the top of the forum, thank you.
Don't retire TechNet! -
(Don't give up yet - 13,085+ strong and growing)

Find and Replace text string in HTML

Opps... I hope this forum is not just for Outlook. My Html files reside on my hard-drive. I am looking for VBA code to open specified file names ####File.html and then find and replace text strings within the html for example "####Name" replaced
with "YYYYY"
I drive the "####File.html" names and the find and replace text strings from an Excel sheet. I am an artist and this Sub would give me time to paint instead of find and replace text. Thank you!
[email protected]

Hello Phil,
The current forum is for developers and Outlook related programming questions. That's why I'd suggest hiring anybody for developing the code for you. You may find freelancers, for example. Try googling for any freelance-related web sites and asking such
questions there.
If you decide to develop an Outlook macro on your own, the
Getting Started with VBA in Outlook 2010 article is a good place to start from.

Find and replace string in file

hi,
i need to find and replace text (string) data in about 100+ files, i've decided to write a small java program to do it but i'm stuck on how to replace.
here is what i'm heading towards:
class ReplaceString {
BufferedReader in;
BufferedReader os;
public static void main(String args[]) {
    ReplaceString obj = new ReplaceString();
    obj.replace();
   void replace() {
     try {
       in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("a.txt");
       os = new BufferdWriter(new FileWriter("a.txt");
       // read until end of file
       String currentLine = new String();
       while((currenLine=is.readLine()) != null) {
         // if matching text then replace????
         if(currentLine.equals("Version 001") {
            // how to now replace the Version 001 with Version 002???
     }catch(IOException e) {
        System.out.println(e);
        in.close();
        os.close();
     in.close();
     os.close();
}the above code i just typed so there might be errors, but looks ok to me, is there any way once i find the string i want to replace, to replace the string with another string. basically i want to replace all occurrences of the text "Version 001" with "Version 002"
Thank you.

Is it always true, as in your example, that the replacement is the same length as the existing string? If so, this one's easy.
Is it also true that you don't need to worry about 16-bit chars? (Again, as in your example.) If you're using just ASCII characters, this gets easier still.
1) Segregate the file I/O from the search/replace process.
2) Main becomes:
readFile();
replace( "this", "that" );
writeFile();Use a byte array buffer, defined in your main class. Fill it via the readFile() code. Use a RandomAccessFile, check its length() to allocate your byte array, then do a single read() to fill the buffer.
A brute force search will certainly work: scan for the first search character, then check the rest for a match, replace if you've got a match and continue scanning. Alternative if your file's aren't too big: create a String from the byte array:
// buffer is a byte array
String s = new String( buffer );And use the String.replaceAll() to do the search/replace. Recover the buffer with:
buffer = string.getBytes();A single write() and close() should handle the remaining work.

How to find and replace any string between " "

Hi everyone,
Here my sample
String szTest;
szTest = "Yellow banana";
szTest = "Blue monkey";
szTest = "Red mango";
szTest is only needed when it's in testing progress. Now I want to put all of that in the /*comment*/ so the released program won't run those code any more (but still keep szTest so I can use it for future develop testing).
So Here what I want after using the Find and Replace Box:
//String szTest; //Manual
/*szTest = "Yellow banana";*/ //use find and replace
/*szTest = "Blue monkey";*/ //use find and replace
/*szTest = "Red mango";*/ //use find and replace
I think I can do this with Regular expressions or Wildcards. But I don't know how to find and replace any string between " and ".
Find: szTest = " ??Any string?? ";
Replace with: /*szTest = " ??Any string?? ";*/
Thanks for reading.

Hi Nathan.j.Smith,
Based on your issue, I suggest you can try the Joel's suggestion check your issue again. In addition, I find a MSDN document about how to use the Regex.Replace Method to match a regular expression pattern with a specified replacement string,
maybe you will get some useful message.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xwewhkd1(v=vs.110).aspx
If the above suggestion still could not provide you, could you please tell me what language you use to create the program for finding and replace any string using regular expression so that we will find the correct programming develop forum to support this
issue?
Best Regards,
We are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time. Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.
Click
HERE to participate the survey.

Using applescript for Find and Replace All in Pages 2.0

i saw that Pages 2.0 is scriptable
i try to create a script for merge use to find and replace all occurence of a certain string using a script but Pages doesn't seems to respond to "Find" even using "System Events"
how can i do to use this function with a script
Thanx for any help
S.B.
ibook G3 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

OK, here's another example. This one gets the text as a string and uses the offset property to find "[", presuming it to be a merge delimiter. (Pages' text doesn't support "offset of").
One failing of this scheme is that the offsets are incorrect if you have inline objects (pictures, shapes, tables, etc.). While it is probably possible to compensate for them, that's a trickier proposition.
<PRE>-- Example merge replacements:
property mergeText : {"[name]", "John Smith", "[address]", "1234 Anystreet"}
on lookup(mergeWord)
set theCount to count of mergeText
repeat with x from 1 to theCount by 2
if item x of mergeText = mergeWord then
return item (x + 1) of mergeText
end if
end repeat
-- If merge field is not found, delete it (replace it with the empty string)
return ""
end lookup
tell application "Pages"
repeat
tell body text of document 1
-- Get text as a string so that "offset of" can be used.
set allText to it as string
set startOffset to offset of "[" in allText
if (startOffset = 0) then
exit repeat
end if
set endOffset to offset of "]" in allText
select (text from character startOffset to character endOffset)
end tell
set mergeWord to contents of selection
tell me to lookup(mergeWord)
set replacement to result
set selection to replacement
if (replacement is "") then
-- Get rid of extra whitespace (space or return)
-- Do it in a "try" block to handle edge cases at start or end of text.
try
set theSel to (get selection)
set ch1 to character before theSel
set ch2 to character after theSel
if ((ch1 is " " or ch1 is return) and (ch2 is " " or ch2 is return)) then
select character after theSel
delete selection
end if
end try
end if
end repeat
end tell</PRE>
Titanium PowerBook Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Dumb Q: problem with Find And Replace window in Flash 8

Dear Flash Group,
apologies if this is trivial, it's my first day using Flash.
I downloaded a Flash project from
http://www.flashorb.com/articles/benchmark_files/flash-benchmark.zip.
This
flash calls into a web service at localhost:8080. I used the
'Find and
Replace' window within Flash Professional 8 to locate the
string
'localhost:8080' and replaced it with plain 'localhost'.
However, when I 'Debug the Movie' (Ctrl-Shift-Enter), it
still tries to
access port 8080! Obsiously, my replace command did not do
what I thought it
would do. I opened the FLA file in a binary editor, and saw 4
more
references to 8080, One if them in 'Properties' of a
WebServicesConnector,
but I cannot figure out how to find the other occurences.
Checking on google, I see lots of people having similar
problems, but no
solutions
Any ideas?
Regards, /george
PS. What do you guys do for code completion - is there a tool
that would
bring Flash on par with an professional IDE?

george,
> when I 'Debug the Movie' (Ctrl-Shift-Enter), it still
> tries to access port 8080! Obsiously, my replace
> command did not do what I thought it would do.
Agreed.
> I opened the FLA file in a binary editor, and saw 4
> more references to 8080, One if them in 'Properties'
> of a WebServicesConnector, but I cannot figure out
> how to find the other occurences.
Might they be the result of that WebServicesConnector
reference?
> Checking on google, I see lots of people having
> similar problems, but no solutions
That's really odd, actually. I'm on these boards every day,
and I've
never heard of this issue. I don't *think* the Find/Replace
dialog visits
panel contents, such as the Component Inspector panel, but I
wouldn't swear
to that.
> What do you guys do for code completion - is there
> a tool that would bring Flash on par with an
professional IDE?
Well, Flash is a professional IDE, of course. By definition,
if you pay
for something, you have acquired a professional product or
service. I know
what you mean, though. Flash itself rocks, but the Actions
panel can be
glaringly weak. Personally, I use SE|PY to edit ActionScript.
http://www.sephiroth.it/python/sepy.php
Sorry I can't speak to your other issue. :-/
David
stiller (at) quip (dot) net
Dev essays:
http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."

Folder action to find and replace text and change line feeds

I want to use a folder action to find and replace text and change Mac carriage returns to DOS line feeds inside text files.
The text to be replaced is: "/Users/wim/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Music" (without the quotes)
This text has to be removed (i.e. replaced by an empty string)
The text occurs many times within each file.
The files are playlists exported from iTunes in the M3U format (which are text files). They contain Mac carriage returns. These need to be changed to DOS line feeds.
I have found the following two perl commands to achieve this:
To find and replace text: perl -pi -w -e 's/THIS/THAT/g;' *.txt
To change carriage returns to line feeds: perl -i -pe 's/\015/\015\012/g' mac-file
I know that it's possible to make a folder action with Automator that executes a shell script.
What I want to do is drop the exported playlists in M3U format in a folder so that the folder action will remove the right text and change the carriage returns.
My questions are:
Is it possible to make a folder action that executes command line commands instead of shell scripts?
What is the correct syntax for the two commands when used in a folder action shell script? Especially, how do I escape the slashes (/) in the string to be removed?
Thanks for your help

Ok, I've include an applescript to run a shell command. The applesript command quoted form makes a string that will end up as a single string on the bash command line. Depending on what you want to do, you may need multiple string on the bash command lines. I've included some information on folder actions.
It is easier to diagnose problems with debug information. I suggest adding log statements to your script to see what is going on. Here is an example.
    Author: rccharles
    For testing, run in the Script Editor.
      1) Click on the Event Log tab to see the output from the log statement
      2) Click on Run
    For running shell commands see:
    http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2002/tn2065.html
on run
    -- Write a message into the event log.
    log " --- Starting on " & ((current date) as string) & " --- "
    -- debug lines
    set desktopPath to (path to desktop) as string
    log "desktopPath = " & desktopPath
    set unixDesktopPath to POSIX path of desktopPath
    log "unixDesktopPath = " & unixDesktopPath
    set quotedUnixDesktopPath to quoted form of unixDesktopPath
    log "quoted form is " & quotedUnixDesktopPath
    try
        set fromUnix to do shell script "ls -l " & quotedUnixDesktopPath
        display dialog "ls -l of " & quotedUnixDesktopPath & return & fromUnix
    on error errMsg
        log "ls -l error..." & errMsg
    end try
end run
How to set up a folder action.
1) right click on folder. click on Enable folder actions
2) Place script in
/Library/Scripts/Folder Actions Scripts
3) right click on folder. click on attach folder action
pick your script.
Create a new folder on the desktop & try.
You can put multiple folder actions on a folder. There are other ways of doing this.
Here is my test script:
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving dropped_items
    repeat with dropped_item_ref in dropped_items
       display dialog "dropped files is " & dropped_item_ref & " on folder " & this_folder
    end repeat
end adding folder items to
How to make the text into an AppleScript program.
Start the AppleScript Editor
/Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor.app
In Snow Leopard it's at: /Applications/Utilities/AppleScript Editor
Copy the script text to the Applescript editor.
Note: The ¬ is typed as option+return. ption+return is the Applescript line continuation characters.
You may need to retype these characters.
Save the text to a file as an script and do not check any of the boxes below.

Find and replace by text and style

We have a fairly large RH HTML project (300+ topics so far)
most of which have a specific heading in Heading2 style. We want to
change all of these to a style based on Heading2, but not use the
Heading2 style b/c we don't want them to show up in the TOC. I have
created a new style and can obviously open every topic and manually
select and change each one - but I'm hoping that one of your RH
gurus will tell me an easier way. Is there anything comparable to
MS Words Find/Replace that will search the whole project for a
specific word in a specific style?

RoboHelp's Multi-File Find and Replace (in the Tools tab)
should be suitable for this job, and you can control each
occurrence as you choose. (Where this RH utility fails is when your
search string might sit on more than one line, which won't be the
case here.)
You'll run two replacement passes (spaces added to < &
> tags for proper viewing in this forum):
Replace < h2 > with < p class=YourNewStyle >
Replace < /h2 > with < /p >
The < h2 > and < /h2 > strings will never be
split between lines, so RH will catch every one.
BTW, Add me to the list of FAR boosters; it'll let you change
case, change file names, etc., etc., etc. Great tool!
Good luck,
Leon

VBA Word Find and Replace characters but excluding certain characters

I am trying to write VBA code in Word that I will eventually run from a VBA Excel module. The aim of the project is to find specific strings in the open Word document that have length of either one or two characters and are of a certain format, and replace
them with other strings in the same format. This is to do with transposing (i.e. changing the musical key) of chord symbols in a songsheet in Word. The Find and Replace strings are contained in ranges in an Excel workbook, which is why I want to eventually
run the code from Excel. I'm much more experienced in writing VBA code in Excel than in Word, and I'm fairly confident with transferring the 'Word VBA' code into an Excel module.
At the moment I'm trying out code entirely in Word, and I've come across a stumbling block. For example, I want it to Find "A" and replace with "B",
BUT only if the "A" is NOT followed by "#" (sharp) or "b" (flat).
Here is the code I've got in Word VBA, which I obtained by editing code produced by the recorder:
Sub F_R()
'Find text must have specific font
With Selection.Find.Font
.Bold = True
.Underline = wdUnderlineWords
.Superscript = False
.Subscript = False
End With
'Replacement text must have specific font
With Selection.Find.Replacement.Font
.Bold = True
.Underline = wdUnderlineWords
.Superscript = False
.Subscript = False
End With
'Find & Replace strings
With Selection.Find
.Text = "A" 'hard-coded here for testing, but this will
'eventually be referenced to a cell in Excel
.Replacement.Text = "B" 'hard-coded here for testing, but this will
'eventually be referenced to a cell in Excel
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = True
.MatchCase = True
.MatchWholeWord = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub
For the Find & Replace section I want to do something like:
With Selection.Find
.Text = "A"
.Text <> "A#"
.Text <> "Ab"
.Replacement.Text = "B"
End With
- but this produces a syntax error, presumably because you can have only one .Text line (or it won't accept <>?)
I tried adopting the way of excluding chars when using the Like operator, and while it compiles, it will not replace
any "A":
With Selection.Find
.Text = "A[!b#]"
.Replacement.Text = "B"
End With
I suspect that I'm going to have to change tack completely in the way I'm doing this. Do you have any suggestions, please?
The chord names/symbols are preceded/succeeded by either spaces or paragraph returns and can look like these, for example (all Font Bold and Underlined words only):
C<sup>7</sup>
Dm<sup>7</sup>
Eb<sup>-5</sup>
Bb<sup>+11</sup>
F#m<sup>7</sup>
i.e. [ABCDEFG][b # | optional][m |optional][- + | superscript, optional][2 3
5 6 7 9 11 13 | superscript, optional]
The crux of my problem is that the note A should be treated as entirely distinct from Ab or A# (and similar for other flattened/sharpened notes).
Sorry for long post.

Hi Ian,
It is not easy to find Microsoft forums. However this forum is for the Visual Studio Net version.
Try this forum for VBA.
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=isvvba
Success
Cor

Find and Replace simple action crashes Illustrator CC

I am now trying Creative Cloud and I came with this bug. When I use a simple action to find and replace a text string in my file it will crash the Illustrator.
My actions is pretty simple:
Find > "aa" (I do have to check all the options to work)
Find and Replace > "aa" to "2014.01.29"
This action works well if I use it once by the Edit menu, but if I close the Illustrator and reopen, it'll not work again and will crash the software.
Everyday I do update my action to actual date, so the action will work normally but sometimes I do have to close the app and I have to make the action again and again everytime.
This was a problem already in CS5, last version that I used.
I'm using Windows 8.

Msot likely this isthe problem of the action playing back to fast.
Actions Flyout >> playback options > set to altast 1 second
You will need to change this setting each time you resart illustrator

Find and replace text in multiple Photoshop files?

Hi there,
Let us say I have six Photoshop files: 1.psd, 2.psd, ..., 6.psd. All of these files contain the word “LoremIpsum” in random text layers, within each document. Is there a way I can search for “LoremIpsum” in all documents and replace it with “Dolor Sit Amet”, all in one go? This is just an example, I need to replace various words, not just one.
I have tried "batch find and replace" software (including powerful tools like Power Grep) but they do not work with psd files… Is there a javascript of external plugin for this kind of task?
Thanks!

You’re welcome, advice given here is free.
If you want to donate something nonetheless you could do so over at
http://ps-scripts.com/bb/
Many of the same people used to contribute there as here and I for one have benefitted considerably from their generous advice on Scripting issues.
A Script can read (or create) txt files, but I do not have a lot of experience with this.
This might work (amend the line »var theTexts = readPref ("….txt", false);« according to your txt-file’s path):
// replace text elements in type layers;
// 2013, use it at your own risk;
#target photoshop
if (app.documents.length > 0) {
          for (var n = 0; n < app.documents.length; n++) {
                    app.activeDocument = app.documents[n];
                    app.activeDocument.suspendHistory("replace text", "main()")
// the opertation;
function main () {
          var myDocument = app.activeDocument;
          var theTexts = readPref ("….txt", false);
          var theArray1 = theTexts.slice(0, Math.round(theTexts.length/2));
          var theArray2 = theTexts.slice(Math.round(theTexts.length/2), theTexts.length);
          alert (theArray1.join("\n")+"\n\n\n"+theArray2.join("\n"))
          for (var b = 0; b < theArray1.length; b++) {
                    replaceText (theArray1[b], theArray2[b])
////// reoplace text //////
function replaceText (replaceThis, replaceWith) {
// =======================================================
var idreplace = stringIDToTypeID( "replace" );
    var desc22 = new ActionDescriptor();
    var idnull = charIDToTypeID( "null" );
        var ref3 = new ActionReference();
        var idPrpr = charIDToTypeID( "Prpr" );
        var idreplace = stringIDToTypeID( "replace" );
        ref3.putProperty( idPrpr, idreplace );
        var idTxLr = charIDToTypeID( "TxLr" );
        var idOrdn = charIDToTypeID( "Ordn" );
        var idAl = charIDToTypeID( "Al " );
        ref3.putEnumerated( idTxLr, idOrdn, idAl );
    desc22.putReference( idnull, ref3 );
    var idUsng = charIDToTypeID( "Usng" );
        var desc23 = new ActionDescriptor();
        var idfind = stringIDToTypeID( "find" );
        desc23.putString( idfind, replaceThis );
        var idreplace = stringIDToTypeID( "replace" );
        desc23.putString( idreplace, replaceWith );
        var idcheckAll = stringIDToTypeID( "checkAll" );
        desc23.putBoolean( idcheckAll, true );
        var idFwd = charIDToTypeID( "Fwd " );
        desc23.putBoolean( idFwd, true );
        var idcaseSensitive = stringIDToTypeID( "caseSensitive" );
        desc23.putBoolean( idcaseSensitive, false );
        var idwholeWord = stringIDToTypeID( "wholeWord" );
        desc23.putBoolean( idwholeWord, false );
        var idignoreAccents = stringIDToTypeID( "ignoreAccents" );
        desc23.putBoolean( idignoreAccents, true );
    var idfindReplace = stringIDToTypeID( "findReplace" );
    desc22.putObject( idUsng, idfindReplace, desc23 );
executeAction( idreplace, desc22, DialogModes.NO );
////// read prefs file //////
function readPref (thePath, binary) {
if (File(thePath).exists == true) {
    var file = File(thePath);
    file.open("r");
    if (binary == true) {file.encoding= 'BINARY'};
    var theText = file.read();
    file.close();
    return String(theText).split(",")
In this case the comma is used to split the text into Strings in Arrays, if your search/replace texts include commas you could use something else, I guess.

How can i find and replace xml tags?

Hi, i am using xml in my workflow and want to be able to remove certain tags if they contain particular text.
here is an example of my xml structure…
<entry>
    <name>DEFAULT</name>
    <tel>DEFAULT</tel>
    <address>DEFAULT</address>
</entry>
I am using this initial structure to set the paragraph styles to be followed when the xml data is imported.
This leaves DEFAULT in place wherever an entry doesn't have any content for that field.
I want to be able to import my XML then run a script that removes any tags that include DEFAULT, - I need the entire xml tag to be removed not just the text, if i do a normal find and replace it will only remove the text not the tags which is causing problems with styling. I also want to remove the end of para/return (^p) that i've placed at the end of the line. So it would be the same as opening up story editor and removing the content + tags + hard return in there, but i want to automate the process…
So i think this is what i need to search for in each case
"<name>DEFAULT</name>^p"
and i want to replace it with nothing ""
Can this be done through scripting (ideally javascript)?
I have a little knowledge of javascript but am not sure how to search and target that kind of string in indesign...
using indesign cs5
many thanks

Hi,
Script should do it in two steps:
1. find all occurences of i.e. ">DEFAULT<"
2. remove whole paragraph which is a found_text's container.
For example this way -JS - (a textFrame filled with your text should be selected) :
var mStory = app.selection[0].parentStory;
app.findTextPreferences = null;
app.findTextPreferences.findWhat = ">DEFAULT<";
var myF = mStory.findText();
var count = myF.length;
while (count--)
     myF[count].paragraphs[0].remove();
rgds

String find and replace

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