Regular Expression Search Capabilities

Nothing is perfect! This is where you can post your ideas and wishes for functions you'd like to see in Help & Manual. Current version only please (H&M7).

Moderators: Alexander Halser, Tim Green

Post Reply
User avatar
Andre.Greeff
Posts: 101
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:18 pm
Location: South Africa

Regular Expression Search Capabilities

Unread post by Andre.Greeff »

I did a quick search to see if this has been requested before, but only found one entry and it's already a good few years old.

Can we please have the option to use regular expressions in the "Find & Replace" dialog? I could try write up a long description of why regexp searching would be amazing, but it would probably turn out to be about as comprehensive as regular expressions are themselves... :)
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23155
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: Regular Expression Search Capabilities

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Andre,

This isn't available within Help & Manual, but you can perform Regex and other search types on the source code of your projects with the free HM Toolbox tool, which also has a lot of other useful tricks. See this thread on the forum for more information and the download link:

http://helpman.it-authoring.com/viewtop ... 22&t=12586
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
User avatar
Andre.Greeff
Posts: 101
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:18 pm
Location: South Africa

Re: Regular Expression Search Capabilities

Unread post by Andre.Greeff »

Apologies for the delay in replying, I only just noticed an unread response in this thread when I went looking for one I started ages back.

I do remember seeing that thread for your toolbox app before, haven't tried it out yet though.. In the coming weeks I'll be looking at restructuring my entire H&M projects folder (gotta love the cost of switching to a better workflow), so it looks like that toolbox will help make that process a little bit less painful. :D

For the record, I still think it would be cool if H&M itself could search using regular expressions. Maybe one day.. :)
IngvarRu
Posts: 26
Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2015 1:18 pm

Re: Regular Expression Search Capabilities

Unread post by IngvarRu »

Do you plan to support regular expressions?
Search for XML source files are not always a good solution
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23155
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: Regular Expression Search Capabilities

Unread post by Tim Green »

IngvarRu wrote:Do you plan to support regular expressions?
Search for XML source files are not always a good solution
We don't currently have any short-term plans for adding regex to Help+Manual itself. In our experience users who want to use regex will want to work on the XML source directly, and you can achieve much more powerful and efficient results there. Those who don't want to do that will generally not be interested in regex. 8)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
Post Reply