Issue 36405 - Regular express found in find not expanded in replace
Summary: Regular express found in find not expanded in replace
Status: CLOSED IRREPRODUCIBLE
Alias: None
Product: Calc
Classification: Application
Component: editing (show other issues)
Version: OOo 1.1.2
Hardware: All All
: P3 Trivial (vote)
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: bettina.haberer
QA Contact: issues@sc
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2004-10-31 15:12 UTC by rhainsworth
Modified: 2013-08-07 15:12 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Issue Type: ENHANCEMENT
Latest Confirmation in: ---
Developer Difficulty: ---

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Description rhainsworth 2004-10-31 15:12:18 UTC 
A regular expression is found correctly, but it is not expanded in replace.

Illustration: the <> brackets below hold the text in the boxes, "regular
expression" checked.
Search for: <??, '0?>
Replace: <>

Finds cell with <30-Apr 30, '02-2002>
Actually replaced with <30-Apr 302-2002>

Viz., only the characters explicitly input <, '> are replaced, with the
metacharacter ? appearing to be unexpanded.

I was expecting to get <30-Apr-2002>

This was annoying as I wanted to replace dates such as
<Apr 30, '02> <May 31, '02>
 by 
<30-Apr-2002> <31-May-2002> 
so that they would be recognised as dates by Calc. This needs a standard
grouping reversal, but that is not possible in ooO as replace does understand
groups.

So I did search and replaces manually to get <30-Apr 30, '02-2002> etc, only to
be thwarted again by a fairly brain-dead RegEx engine that can understand what
'find' has located.

I looked at other RE issues and most are only listed as "enhancements". The
almost complete disconnect between the find and replace syntaxes (not being able
to use groups, which is attributed to the original specification apparently) is
to my mind a major weakness.

I saw a comment that better reg exes would not reach 2.0. That is a disappointment.
Comment 1 frank 2004-11-01 10:13:48 UTC 
Hi Bettina,

this seems to be an ehancement request. Please have a look.

Frank
Comment 2 rhainsworth 2004-11-01 17:13:04 UTC 
My error, Not an issue

Rereading 'help' on regular expressions a day later shows the expression I
should have used needed dots not ? to represent single characters.
Comment 3 frank 2004-11-02 07:36:36 UTC 
Ok, so I close this one as wfm.

Frank
Comment 4 frank 2004-11-02 07:36:52 UTC 
closed wfm.