Using HomeSite
Chapter 9  Testing and Maintaining Web Pages

Using the Find and Replace Feature

The Search menu gives you access to basic and extended searches and to automated replacement of extended characters and double-spacing. The Search tab in the Results window displays the results of extended operations.

Search text selection options

Selecting text in a document automatically inserts it in the Find what text box. If you select the Options > Settings > Editor > Select nearest word for searches option, the following behaviors are enabled:

• If no word is highlighted, the word closest to the current cursor position is inserted in the Find what text box.
• If the cursor is on a blank line, is inserted.

This option applies to both basic and extended operations.

Saving search text

You can reuse search strings for both basic and extended searches, but the method for saving the search text differs.

• Search text is automatically saved in the basic search. Open the drop-down list for the Find what text box to enter a saved string.
• You can selectively save search text in extended operations. Click the arrow button next to the Find what box to selectively save and reuse entries.

Using basic search commands

The basic Find and Replace operations are performed on the active document, even if it is an untitled, unsaved document.

To search the current document:

1. Select Search > Find to open the Find dialog box.
2. Enter the text that you want to locate in the Find what box.

   If you highlight text in the editor, it displays in the Find what box. If no text is highlighted, the text string at the cursor position displays. If the cursor is in a blank space, the nearest text string displays.

3. Set the Match whole words, Match case, and Direction options as needed.
4. Click the Find Next button to sequentially highlight each match in the document.

   Press F3 to resume the search from the current cursor position after the search dialog box closes.

To replace text in the current document:

1. Select Search > Replace to open the Replace dialog box.
2. Enter the text in the Find and Replace boxes.
3. Set the Match whole words and Match case options.

   In addition to the Up and Down Direction options, you can restrict the search to part of the document by highlighting a block of text in the editor and selecting Selection.

4. You can do a selective Replace or select Replace All matches.

The last 10 items are saved in the Find what and Replace what drop-down lists.

Using the extended find and replace features

For more complex operations across multiple documents, use the Extended Find and Extended Replace commands.

• Search the current document, all open documents, folders, or projects.
• Multiple untitled, unsaved document are included in extended operations and are listed in the Results window by their document tab label (Untitled1, Untitled2, etc.).
• The In folders option let you restrict searches to files with specified extensions and to just the root folder.
• Select the Match case option for case-sensitive searches.
• Select Regular expressions to enable parsing of regular expression entries. For details on the implementation of RegExp syntax in HomeSite, see Searching with regular expressions.
• Select the Skip tags while searching option to exclude tags from the search. This option is not available when the Regular expressions option is selected.
• The Extended Replace dialog box lets you backup files before making replacements at the folder or project level.
• The Extended Replace command skips read-only files.
• Use the Esc key to cancel an extended operation.

Viewing results of extended operations

The Results window opens to display a list of locations where the search text was found and/or replaced. You can work with these results in several ways:

• Double-clicking a match in the results list highlights it in the document, opening the document if necessary.
• Use Ctrl+click to highlight multiple matches and then use Ctrl+double-click to open the selected documents.
• Right-click in the Results pane to open the list in the default external browser. Use the browser's Print command to print the list.

Replacing extended and special characters

Use the Search > Replace Extended Characters command to either replace extended characters with character entities, or replace character entities with the equivalent extended characters. This command works only in the current document.

Replacing double-spaced lines

Because of the way different operating systems treat carriage returns, text files saved on UNIX or Macintosh systems might become double-spaced when opened in Studio. Use the Search > Replace Double Spacing with Single Spacing command to collapse double-spaced lines to single-spaced lines in the current document.

Searching with regular expressions

HomeSite supports searching with regular expressions to match patterns in character strings in the Extended Find and Replace commands. Regular expressions allow you to specify all the possible variants in a search and to precisely control replacements. Ordinary characters are combined with special characters to define the pattern for the search. The RegExp parser evaluates the selected files and returns each matching pattern.

When you select the Find option, the matching pattern is added to the find list. When you select the Replace option, the replacement text is inserted. When replacing a string, it is just as important to ensure what is not matched as what is. Simple regular expressions can be concatenated into complex search criteria. Note that enabling the Regular expressions option in the Extended dialog boxes disables the Skip tags while searching option.

The RegExp engine processes the entire document, it does not parse on a line-by-line basis. This affects the way the characters such the asterisk (*), carat (^) and dollar sign ($) should be used.

Special characters

Because special characters are the operators in regular expressions, in order to represent a special character as an ordinary one, you need to precede it with a backslash. To represent a backslash, for instance, use a double backslash (\\).

Single-character regular expressions

This section describes the rules for creating regular expressions. You can use regular expressions in the Search > Extended Find and Replace commands to match complex string patterns.

The following rules govern one-character RegExp that match a single character:

• Special characters are: + * ? . [ ] ^ $ ( ) { } | \
• Any character that is not a special character matches itself.
• Use the keyboard (Tab, Enter) to match whitespace characters.
• The asterisk (*) matches the specified characters throughout the entire document.
• The carat (^) matches the beginning of the document.
• The dollar sign ($) matches the end of the document.
• A backslash (\) followed by any special character matches the literal character itself, that is, the backslash escapes the special character.
• The # and - characters must be escaped in expressions (## --) just as though they are special characters.
• A period (.) matches any character, including newline. To match any character except a newline, use [^#chr(13)##chr(10)#], which excludes the ASCII carriage return and line feed codes.
• A set of characters enclosed in brackets ([]) is a one-character RE that matches any of the characters in that set. For example, "[akm]" matches an "a", "k", or "m". Note that if you want to include ] (closing square bracket) in square brackets it must be the first character. Otherwise, it won't work even if you use \].
• Any regular expression can be followed by one of the following suffixes: {m,n} forces a match of m through n (inclusive) occurrences of the preceding regular expression. The suffix {m,} forces a match of at least m occurrences of the preceding regular expression. The syntax {,n} is not allowed.
• A range of characters can be indicated with a dash. For example, "[a-z]" matches any lowercase letter. However, if the first character of the set is the caret (^), the RegExp matches any character except those in the set. It does not match the empty string. For example: [^akm] matches any character except "a", "k", or "m". The caret loses its special meaning if it is not the first character of the set.
• All regular expressions can be made case insensitive by substituting individual characters with character sets, for example, [Nn][Ii][Cc][Kk].

Character classes

You can specify a character by using one of the POSIX character classes. You enclose the character class name inside two square brackets, as in this Replace example:

"Allaire's Web Site","[[:space:]]","*","ALL")

This code replaces all the spaces with *, producing this string:

Allaire's*Web*Site

The following table shows supported POSIX character classes:

Multicharacter regular expressions

You can use the following rules to build multicharacter regular expressions:

• Parentheses group parts of regular expressions together into grouped subexpressions that can be treated as a single unit. For example, (ha)+ matches one or more instances of "ha".
• A one-character regular expression or grouped subexpressions followed by an asterisk (*) matches zero or more occurrences of the regular expression. For example, [a-z]* matches zero or more lowercase characters.
• A one-character regular expression or grouped subexpressions followed by a plus (+) matches one or more occurrences of the regular expression. For example, [a-z]+ matches one or more lowercase characters.
• A one-character regular expression or grouped subexpressions followed by a question mark (?) matches zero or one occurrences of the regular expression. For example, xy?z matches either "xyz" or "xz".
• The concatenation of regular expressions creates a regular expression that matches the corresponding concatenation of strings. For example, [A-Z][a-z]* matches any capitalized word.
• The OR character (|) allows a choice between two regular expressions. For example, jell(y|ies) matches either "jelly" or "jellies".
• Braces ({}) are used to indicate a range of occurrences of a regular expression, in the form {m, n} where m is a positive integer equal to or greater than zero indicating the start of the range and n is equal to or greater than m, indicating the end of the range. For example, (ba){0,3} matches up to three pairs of the expression "ba".

Using back references

HomeSite supports back referencing, which allows you to match text in previously matched sets of parentheses. You can use a slash followed by a digit n (\n) to refer to the nth parenthesized subexpression.

One example of how you can use back references is searching for doubled words, for example, to find instances of "is is" or "the the" in text. The following example shows the syntax you use for back referencing in regular expressions:

("There is is coffee in the the kitchen",
"([A-Za-z]+)[ ]+\1","*","ALL")

This code searches for words that are all letters ([A-Za-z]+) followed by one or more spaces [ ]+ followed by the first matched subexpression in parentheses. The parser detects the two occurrences of is as well as the two occurrences of the and replaces them with an asterisk, resulting in the following text:

There * coffee in * kitchen

Anchoring a regular expression to a string

You can anchor part of a regular expression to either the beginning or end of the string being searched:

• If a caret (^) is at the beginning of a subexpression, the matched string must be at the beginning of the string being searched.
• If a dollar sign ($) is at the end of a subexpression, the matched string must be at the end of the string being searched.

Expression examples

The following examples show some regular expressions and describe what they match

[\?&]value=

[A-Z]:(\\[A-Z0-9_]+)+

[A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9_]*

([A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9_]*)(\.[A
-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9_]*)?

(\+|-)?[1-9][0-9]*

(\+|-)?[1-9][0-9]*(\.[0-9]*)
?

(\+|-)?[1-9]\.[0-9]*E(\+|-)?
[0-9]+

a{2,4}

(ba){3,}

Resources

An excellent reference on regular expressions is Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey E.F. Friedl, published by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.

Copyright © 2000, Allaire Corporation. All rights reserved.