Find & Replace It!

version 1.0.0

User Manual

Last update: June 2010

Copyright © 2010 dProg – Philippe Docourt

All rights reserved.

1 About Find & Replace It!

1.1 Summary

Find & Replace It! is a powerful search and replace utility. It allows performing very complex batch replacements inside text files of any size. It supports regular expression syntax and dozens of encodings. It has scripting capabilities which allow transforming on the fly the replacement text for every found string. It even handles batch processing of the encoding of files, as well as of types of end-of-lines.

Here are five key points that make the difference with its competitors:

• Handles more than 50 text encodings. If your are stucked with some UTF-8 encoding, some Chinese contents or any others non ASCII encodings, Find & Replace It! is the solution for you. It also handles the different kinds of end-of-line.

• Handles huge files. If you want to process any kind of dump files containing tons of text, like a log of 10 GB, Find & Replace It! will do it for you.

• Provides a regular expression editor. This editor offers tools to easily build regular expressions even if you are a newby.

• Provides a find & replace preview. The preview window gives you an immediate feed-back that makes easy to check the impact of your replacement within any file without modifying its content. This is especially usefull whenever you are searching for a complex expression and you don't want to replace it blindly in many files.

• Makes it possible to dynamically adjust the replacement text. It provides three ways of dynamically adjust the replacement text according to the text found. For instance, it is possible to reuse a fragment of the found expression into the replacement text, do arithmetic operations on found text, insert the path or filename of replaced files, apply conditional operations on the replacement string (JavaScript interface), manipulate dates, etc.

The GUI of Find & Replace It! consists of seven panes that you can arrange in any way you want. You can dock panes side by side, arrange them in tabs, or make them float. Adjust the windows layout to the way you like to work. Find & Replace It! comes with four pre-arrange layouts that can be customized the way you want depending on the size of your screen. You can switch from one layout to another in a simple click.

1.2 Main features

The list below describes some of the most important characteristics of Find & Replace It!:

• Find and replace across many files at once

• Supports regular expression syntax

• Allows multi-line matching

• Supports many text encodings, including Unicode (e.g. UTF-8)

• Preserves line endings while processing files

• Preserves BOM while processing Unicode files

• Allows you to perform dynamic replacements based on found expression captures

• Provides built-in processing function for dynamic replacements (e.g. convert captured expressions to lower case, Base64 encoding, Hex encoding, UTF-8 encoding, etc.)

• Provides a JavaScript like interface to customize replacements on the fly by script processing

• Displays matched expressions reports for file search/replace operations

• Full featured dynamic preview of matched expressions and replacements

• Provides tools for converting text encoding

• Provides tools for converting line endings (Windows, Unix, Macintosh, Unicode)

• Detects text encoding and line endings of files

• Provides advanced filtering options for selecting files that need to be processed, including file name filters and file path exclusion filters

• Allows you to load and save expressions to find, replacement definitions and file filters

• Handles huge files (> 10 GB)

• Regular expression editor / tester

• Fully multi-threaded for fast processing and responsiveness

• Allows you to cancel long operations

• GUI is totally modular

• Creates backup of changed files if required

• Exports the search and replace reports

• Cross-platform: Windows, Mac OS X and Linux

1.3 Supported platforms

Here is a list of supported platforms:

• MS Windows:

• Windows 2000 [not tested]

• Windows XP

• Windows Vista

• Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit)

• Mac OS X Intel:

• Mac OS X 10.4

• Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”

• Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”

• Mac OS X PPC:

• Mac OS X 10.4 [not tested]

• Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”

• Linux:

• Fedora 13 (32-bit)

• Ubuntu 10.04 (32-bit and 64-bit)

• Kubuntu 10.04 (32-bit and 64-bit)

Important notes about platform support:

• The platforms noted as [not tested] in the list, are platforms on which the software should work but with no warranty. All development tools used in this software are certified on these non-tested platforms but we didn't check by ourself. Most of these platforms are pretty old, that's why there are not actively supported.

• The Linux installer requires the following commands: bzip2, lzma, xdg-mime, xdg-desktop-menu, xdg-icon-resource. If one of them is missing, the installation will stop and you might have to manually remove the installation folder.

• On Linux you must have the libicu42 package installed to run the application.

• All modern 64-bit Linux platforms should be supported. However the only tested platforms are Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit and Kubuntu 10.04 64-bit.

1.4Support and services

For general information, please visit our website at: http://www.dprog.ch

If you have any questions about pricing and/or license terms, don't hesitate to write to us at: order@dprog.ch

All support requests regarding software usage as well as general questions about demo version must be addressed to: support@dprog.ch

Please note that support is only available to registered customers who have a valid license for their software copies. Moreover we kindly request our customers to use the online form for posting support requests. This form is accessible through: http://www.dprog.ch/home/index.php/support

Finally, you might read the online Terms of Use statement for details about services provided by dProg – Philippe Docourt.

1.5 Known issues and limitations

The text-encoding detection uses heuristics that do not always provide accurate results except for all Unicode encodings (i.e.: UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32). Since version 1.0 the charset detection has been greatly improved. Since this version we use the ICU library from IBM. However, the process is partly statistical in nature, and the results can not be guaranteed to always be correct.

For performance reasons the Find & Replace Preview has a content limit of 100'000'000 characters. By default this limit is fixed to 5'000'000 to increase search speed. This can be changed through the preferences panel.

For performance reasons it's not possible to search for an expression longer than 50'000'000 characters. By default this limit is fixed to 5'000'000 to increase search speed. This can be changed through the preferences panel.

The product activation requires an Internet connection. There is no way to proceed with activation by phone or any other communication channel.

2 Product installation

Please refer to the appropriate installation instructions available for download at:

http://www.dprog.ch/home/download (see Find & Replace It! Installation Instructions)

These instructions might vary from version to version. Therefore you are kindly requested to download the correct installation notice from the link mentioned above.

The installation notice covers the supported platforms, how to install the software under Windows, Mac and Linux, how to uninstall for every platform.

Product updates can be obtained from the same link.

3 Product activation

There are two ways of using Find & Replace It!, either in demo mode or in full-featured mode. Every time you start the application, a dialog window will ask you to activate your copy of Find & Replace It! or to run it in demo mode.

3.1 Demo version

In demo mode, you don't need to proceed with activation, meaning you don't need an activation key, or a login on our website.

The demo version comes with all major features except that you can neither save configuration files nor replace text directly in files. However, the preview window let you see the result of replacements in a read-only mode.

The activation window shows you an expiry date for activating the software. After this date, the software will not start any more without being activated first. Until this date, you can simply refuse the activation by pressing Use demo version and use the software in demo mode. Until this date, you can simply refuse the activation by pressing Use demo version and use the software in demo mode. Once that the demo period expired the button is replaced with a button called Close.

3.2 Full version

The activation process registers your activation key, so that your personal login will own it. An activation is necessary to gain access to the full version of the product.

The activation requires the following steps:

1. Enter your login for www.dprog.ch website (i.e. you have to register first on our website);

2. Get an activation key:

   1. You can get a 30-day trial key for activating your copy by clicking on Get a trial key

   2. You can buy an activation key by clicking on Buy a key. You should receive your activation key by e-mail once you have bought it.

3. Type or paste your activation key in the appropriate field;

4. Press Activate product and wait for the answer.

   1. The activation process requires a connection to Internet.

   2. In case of success, the activation window will be automatically closed. Otherwise, you might try again later. In case of problem contact our support.

Note that if the field named Valid through is empty, then your license will last forever otherwise your activation will be revoked by the date shown in this field.

Once the product has been activated, the activation dialog no longer shows up at startup time. However, this dialog might reappear from time to time if your hardware or software configuration has changed. In this case, you will simply have to reactivate your key. This will automatically update your hardware ID in our database. If too many changes occur, the activation might be refused. In such a case we kindly request you to contact us in order to reactivate your copy of the software.

You can check your activation key at any time through the Help/Activate product... menu as shown below:

4 User interface

The GUI of Find & Replace It! consists of seven panes that you can arrange in any way you want. You can select which component must be displayed as central widget; you can dock panes side by side, arrange them in tabs, or make them float. Adjust the windows layout to the way you like to work. This enables you to be at ease on a wide range of screen resolutions, from your laptop with its 13.3-inch display up to your 30-inch display.

Find & Replace It! comes with three pre-arrange layouts, one for each possible central widget, that can be customized the way you want depending on the size of your screen. You can switch from one layout to another in a simple click.

Three panes can take place in the center of the main window:

• File Selector;

• Find & Replace Editor;

• Find & Replace Preview.

When toggled, each of these panes becomes the center of a pre-arranged layout that can be customized. The left side bar of the main window provides a shortcut for toggling the visibility of these windows.

To have the File Selector as the central widget, you have to select:
To have the Find & Replace Editor as the central widget. you have to select:
To have the Find & Replace Preview as the central widget, you have to select:

This central widget can't be moved, but it can be resized (to become more or less large and more or less high).

The top, bottom and right (not left) areas around the central widget are classical dock areas for dockable widgets.

To toggle the visibility of the windows that you want to have on the screen, you have to checkmark some of the seven icons located on the left side bar of the main window. These seven icons are shown below:

File Selector	Find & Replace Preview	HTML Viewer	Find & Replace Editor
Regular Expression Editor	Find Text	Output

Every pane (also panel, window) can be floating, stacked one on the others or just docked.

As you can see, the three central widgets of the three pre-configured layouts are also available as dockable widgets, when one of the other two pre-configured layout is selected. In other words, when a particular window is displayed as a central widget, it is not any more available as a dockable window. This simply means you can't have twice the same window on the screen.

If you have two or more stacked widgets on the others in the same dock area, you can see them as tabs at the bottom of the area.

For example, when the Find Text is stacked on the HTML Viewer you get that:

5 Getting started

5.1Selecting files to search/replace in

The files to be searched and / or converted can be selected through the panel called File Selector.

There are two sections that work together for searching and selecting files. They are Search scope and Found files.

1. Select a folder to search in. This is the root path where you want to scan for files. You can type a path directly in the Search in text field or use the button on the right.

2. Choose to search files recursively into sub folders or not by toggling the Search in sub-directories check mark.

3. Enter zero, one or many file name filters within the File name filter field. These filters interpret wildcards characters like '*'. They must be comma separated.

4. Optionally add one or more expressions to exclude some file paths when searching for files. This can be achieve with the button. These filters can use wildcard or regular expression syntax. Note that all file paths are described with '/' separator whatever the platform or system locale is. It is possible to remove filters by selecting the apropriate rows and then clicking on .

5. Select files that you want to process in the found files list. Unmarked files are not going to be read or touched. The content of this list is updated whenever you change search options. You can filter the content of this list through the file path filter above the list view. Click the column header to sort that column.

The scan of the harddrive for searching files is a pretty long operation when running on a very large directory structure, however it is possible to stop it at any time by clicking on or by pressing the Escape key.

5.2Doing a backup of files before modification

The File backup section allows you to create a backup for each modified files.

1. 
   Mark the backup check box as shown above;

2. Type a suffix for your backup files.

5.3Detecting and selecting files encoding

Character set detection is the process of determining the character set, or encoding, of character data in an unknown format. This is, at best, an imprecise operation using statistics and heuristics. Because of this, detection works best if you supply at least a few hundred bytes of character data that's mostly in a single language. In some cases, the language can be determined along with the encoding.

Several different techniques are used for character set detection. For multi-byte encodings, the sequence of bytes is checked for legal patterns. The detected characters are also check against a list of frequently used characters in that encoding. For single byte encodings, the data is checked against a list of the most commonly occurring three letter groups for each language that can be written using that encoding. The detection process is configured to ignore html or xml style markup, which can interfere with the detection process by changing the statistics.

The Found files section shows the found files according to your current options for searching files. The column Encoding is the only one that is editable by the user. You can choose by hand the appropriate codec for each file with a click on the appropriate row, in the Encoding column. This will show up a drop down list of available codecs as shown below:

The “best codec” for processing text encoding of each file is detected using statistics and heuristics, and it is selected by default. Please note that these heuristics are only reliable for detecting Unicode charsets. For other encodings it will only give you some suggestions. There might are many “acceptable codecs” and they are all marked with a blue light on the left side of the drop down list. This is shown below:

If the codec name is set to Unknown for a given row, that means that no codec seems to be consistent with the associated file content. When one or more codecs are detected as acceptable, the preferred text encoding is selected by default when it is available. The list of acceptable codecs is automatically determined whenever a new file is displayed in the list but the list is not updated when files are changed on your harddrive.

For refreshing the encoding detection, click on . This will detect the acceptable codecs for all found files listed. The detection process will attempt to identify the charset that best matches the characteristics of the byte data, but the process is partly statistical in nature, and the results can not be guaranteed to always be correct. For best accuracy in charset detection, the input data should be primarily in a single language, and a minimum of a few hundred bytes worth of plain text in the language are needed. The detection process will attempt to ignore html or xml style markup that could otherwise obscure the content. The charset detection is a pretty long operation when running on thousands of files, however it is possible to stop it at any time by clicking on or by pressing the Escape key.

If you need to look at the decoded content of a file, right-click on a file entry, then click on Open file in test preview. This will allow you to play with the codec used to decode the file.

Note: Character set detection is at best an imprecise operation. The text-encoding detection uses heuristics that do not always provide accurate results except for all Unicode encodings (i.e.: UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32).

5.4 Converting files encoding

For converting the text encoding of a given set of files, follow these steps:

1. Select the files you want to convert with a check mark in the File path column, within the Found files section (see screenshot below);

2. Select the current text encoding of these files if the auto-detected encodings are not accurate;

3. Select the target encoding for your set of files;

4. Optionally you can select the Generate Byte Order Mark (BOM) check box. This will insert the BOM (Byte Order Mark) at the beginning of the file when it is written. This option only apply to Unicode text encoding: UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32. Note that this option may interfere with the target encoding. For instance, if you choose an Unicode encoding that does not allow the BOM, it will turn your target encoding to the closest Unicode encoding that allows it.

5. Optionally you might schedule a backup of modified files;

6. Click on the button to start the encoding conversion. If you want to stop the conversion process, click on the button .

5.5Searching for an expression

The Find & Replace Editor pane allows you to define what you want to search or replace.

The Expression to find section allows you to setup an expression to search for:

1. 
   Enter the expression to search into the Find text field. Alternatively you might use the button to edit your expression with the Regular Expression Editor.

2. You can choose the way your expression must be interpreted through the Syntax drop down list:

• Simple text or fixed string: means that the pattern to be matched is interpreted as a plain string

• 
  Wildcard: is similar to the functionality found in command shells

• Wildcard Unix: This is similar to Wildcard but with the behavior of a Unix shell. The wildcard characters can be escaped with the character "".

• Regular expression: is a pattern for matching substrings in a text

3. Select the options that apply when matching against your expression:

The 'Minimal match' match option is only available when 'Regular expression' syntax is set. This turns the quantifiers in non-greedy mode.

4. Select the files you want to scan with a check mark in the File path column;

5. Select the current text encoding of these files if the auto-detected encodings are not accurate;

6. Optionally you can test your expression with the Find & Replace Preview;

7. Click on the button to start searching your expression into the selected files. If you need to stop the search, click again on the same button which has been morphed into once the search has been started.

Note: For performance reasons it's not possible to search for an expression longer than 50'000'000 characters. By default this limit is fixed to 5'000'000 to increase search speed. This can be changed through the preferences panel.

5.6 Replacing found expressions with fixed string

The Find & Replace Editor pane allows you to define what you want to search or replace.

1. Setup the expression you want to search;

2. 
   Type your replacement pattern for matched occurrences of your expression in the Replace with text field:

3. Optionally you might schedule a backup of modified files;

4. Click on the button to start searching your expression into the selected files. If you need to stop the replacement, click again on the same button which has been morphed into once the replacement has been started.

5.7Using the Find & Replace Preview

When editing an expression to search for, it is convenient to match it against real data. In order to achieve this, let's take a tour of the Find & Replace Preview window. The preview window gives you an immediate feed-back that makes easy to check the impact of your replacement within any file without modifying its content. Such a realtime visualization is especially usefull whenever you want to build a complex expression to search for. This preview can also be used as a multi-document editor.

Here are the key features of this tool:

• check the impact of a given text encoding when applied to a file content;

• edit a text sample against which you want to match an expression to find;

• preview matched occurrences of an expression to find inside a given text sample;

• preview resulting content of a text sample after the replacement of all occurrences of your expression with your replacement pattern;

• preview both found expressions and processed replacements inside a text sample;

• navigate through found occurrences of a specific expression or replacement pattern;

• preview HTML documents.

5.7.1Plain text preview

You can open files in the preview by clicking on . The button allows saving the content of the preview. The name displayed in the tab will be used as the file name for saving. If the label of the tab is not a valid file path you will have to select a destination file.

It is possible to preselect the preferred codec for the preview of upcoming files. In fact, the active codec of the preview is used as preferred codec for the next opened file. It is also possible to reload the content of the file in the preview with the button . Thus the selected codec will be used to read the file.

Note that all line breaks in the preview are internally represented by a Line Feed character (LF, U+00A). This is always true, whatever the original end-of-line used in the displayed file. If you want to search for a multi-line expression with another style of line break, we strongly advise you to use a regular expression with appropriate \s+ sequences in order to match any kind of end-of-line.

The following screenshots illustrate some of the capabilities described above:

Highlight of matched expressions within a file. The tool-tip shows information about occurrence location.

Note: For performance reasons the Find & Replace Preview has a content limit of 100'000'000 characters. By default this limit is fixed to 5'000'000 to increase search speed. This can be changed through the preferences panel.

Highlight of replaced expressions within a file.

Highlight of both found and replaced expressions within a file. The tool-tip shows information about replacement location.

5.7.2HTML preview

In addition to the plain text preview, you can activate the HTML Viewer through the button. That will enable you to preview HTML documents, with either their original or altered content, without having to save them.

The HTML preview in action with our own website.

The viewer is directly synchronized with the current content of plain text preview. That means the Display mode will also apply on the HTML content.

Because the viewer cannot resolve relative links in the HTML document from the content of the preview, you might need to enter an appropriate URL. This URL is used to process all resources referenced by relative links within the document (i.e.: CSS, images, scripts, etc.). This is not required when all resources are given with absolute path.

The HTML Viewer provides rendering of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) documents, styled using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripted with JavaScript. Some common plugins are also supported through the Netscape Plugin API, provided you have appropriate binary files for those plugins installed on your computer. The following locations are searched for plugins:

Linux/Unix
.mozilla/pluginsﾠin the user's home directory .netscape/pluginsﾠin the user's home directory System locations, such as /usr/lib/browser/plugins /usr/local/lib/mozilla/plugins /usr/lib/firefox/plugins /usr/lib64/browser-plugins /usr/lib/browser-plugins /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins /usr/local/netscape/plugins /opt/mozilla/plugins /opt/mozilla/lib/plugins /opt/netscape/plugins /opt/netscape/communicator/plugins /usr/lib/netscape/plugins /usr/lib/netscape/plugins-libc5 /usr/lib/netscape/plugins-libc6 /usr/lib64/netscape/plugins /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins Locations specified by environment variables: $MOZILLA_HOME/plugins $MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH $QTWEBKIT_PLUGIN_PATH
Windows
The user'sﾠApplication Data\Mozilla\pluginsﾠdirectory Standard system locations of plugins for Quicktime, Flash, etc.
Mac OS X
Library/Internet Plug-Insﾠin the user's home directory The systemﾠ/Library/Internet Plug-Insﾠdirectory

5.8Using the Regular Expression Editor

When you need to write a multi-line expression to search, the Regular Expression Editor is your best friend. The multi-line edition is shown bellow with a simple text expression:

Note that all line break are internally represented by a Line Feed character (LF, U+00A). If you want to search for a multi-line expression with another style of line break, we strongly advise you to use a regular expression with appropriate '\s+' sequences in order to match any kind of end-of-line.

In addition, this editor simplifies the setup of regular expression. It provides tools to manage regular expression entities. On the right side of the text editor, there is a list of available regular expression entities (e.g.: special characters, grouping expression, etc.). If you leave the mouse over an item of this list, a explanatory tooltip will appear. This is show in the figure bellow:

The Regular Expression Editor has some nice features like syntax highlighting and scope matching (e.g.: matching scope for '()', '[]', '{}').

The Regular Expression Editor offers an automatic syntax check for wildcard and regular expressions:

As soon as your wildcard or regular expression pattern becomes invalid, it is underlined. A tooltip provides a brief description of the syntax error detected.

5.9 Advanced replacements

Advanced replacement covers three main features that make Find & Replace It! really powerful:

• Injecting a fragment of the matched expression into the replacement text;

• Transforming a fragment of the matched expression before injecting it into the replacement text;

• Interact through a JavaScript interface with the replacement text.

Each of these points is described in the following chapters.

5.9.1Using captured texts within replacement string

This feature requires regular expression syntax for the expression to find; furthermore, you should be familiar with captures within regular expressions. To learn more about these notions we recommend to read the Regular expressions chapter. If you are familiar with regexp, read on the following example.

Whenever you capture some text fragments with an expression to find,

you can inject these captured fragments into your replacement pattern. This is done with a %1, %2, …, %9 pattern. Where the number that follows the percent sign is the capture index. %0 is a special, implicit capture that includes the full matched expression.

Let's imagine we have a CSV file containing contacts like in the following snippet:

First Name: John; Family Name: Smith; Phone: ...

First Name: Mike; Family Name: Dupont; Phone: ...

We want to swap the first two columns. Here we have to capture two variable expressions (first name and family name) and move them around. Here is an easy way to do it.

Find:

(First Name: [^;]+); ( Family Name: [^;]+)

The parentheses in expression above will capture two fragments of every matched occurrences in the CSV file.

Replace with:

%2; %1

The replacement pattern above is a dynamic text that varies for every matched occurrences. In fact %1 will be replaced by the content matched by the first parentheses scope. Idem with %2 and the second parentheses scope.

5.9.2 Processing captured texts

This feature requires regular expression syntax for the expression to find; furthermore, you should be familiar with captures within regular expressions. To learn more about these notions we recommend to read the Regular expressions chapter. If you are familiar with regexp, read on the following example.

As shown in the previous chapter, it is possible to inject captured texts into your final replacement string, through a special syntax. It is also possible to apply an additional processing to captured strings before injecting them as a replacement expression. This can be handle with the Capture processing section:

Capture #1 and #2 are available but not capture #3. A distinct process has been attached to each capture, however it is not compulsory.

The left column is not editable. The check mark is toggled depending on the presence of captures and placeholders respectively within the expression to find and within the replacement pattern. The right column let you choose a transformation to apply to the capture, before injecting it as the replacement text at its placeholder location.

Let's imagine that we want to upper case the first letter that follows a ':' sign inside a file. A tedious solution might be to replace all : a with : A, : b with : B and so on. This will take some time. And then, what happens with accentuated letters or oriental characters ? What happens if a tab sometimes replaces the whitespace after the ':' sign? What if there no whitespace at all or many whitespaces due to a typing mistake? This solution is definitively inappropriate.

Here is a better way to handle this task:

Find:

:\s*(\w)

The expression above will match all ':' followed by any number of whitespace characters (including tabs and line breaks) and at at least a word character.

In the Capture processing section, select To upper case as process for the first capture. This will transform to upper case the content matched by the first pair of parentheses, before injecting it as %1 in the replacement pattern.

Finally we replace with:

: %1

If the built-in capture processes are not sufficient, you might try the scripting interface.

5.9.3Processing replacement pattern on the fly by script

Find & Replace It! provides a JavaScript like interface to customize replacements on the fly by script. This is especially useful when you need some logic to interpret an expression and generate a replacement pattern based on it (e.g. find all numbers in a text and divide them by a given factor to convert units). To achieve this you only have to type your JavaScript in the script editor.

our script will be called at 3 different occasions. All of them can be accumulated as desired:

• Once with the original replacement pattern and the full matched expression;

• Once for each captured text in your expression if the capture process has been set to Apply script;

• Once at the very end of the process, after all capture processing, with the resulting replacement pattern.

A dummy script outputting invariable properties from the scripting context.

The scripting interface provides a simple way to access the current matched context as well as the replacement pattern through the global replaceCommand object. The table below summarizes the context information made available to the script:

Properties of replaceCommand	Object or Data Type	Description
Invariable properties: these variables do not change during the process of a given matched expression
findExpression	RegExp	Matched regular expression.
startOffset	Number	Starting offset of matched expression in the full text.
endOffset	Number	Ending offset of matched expression in the full text.
captureCount	Number	Number of captures contained in the expression to find.
capturedTexts	Array	Array of captured strings within the full matched expression.
Variable properties: these variables vary depending on the capture for which the script is called
captureIndex	Number	Index of the current capture for wich the script has been called. This index is included between 0 and 'captureCount + 1'.
captureText	String	Captured text at current capture index. This property returns the full matched expression when captureIndex is zero and returns an empty string when captureIndex equals 'captureCount + 1'. Otherwise it returns the captured string at the given index starting from 1.
replacementLength	Number	Length of the current replacement text. This length takes in account already replaced placeholders (i.e. %i).
replacementText	String	Current replacement text. This text contains already replaced placeholders (i.e. %i).

The scripting interface also provides a simple way to access some properties of the file being parsed. You can read these properties through the global currentFile object. The table below summarizes the context information made available to the script:

Properties of currentFile	Object or Data Type	Description
Invariable properties: these variables do not change during the process of a given matched expression
filePath	String	Full file path (absolute) including the name of the file.
dirPath	String	Absolute directory path where the file is located.
fileName	String	Full file name, including the extension.

Let's imagine we have a text file containing numerous numerical values. All of these values represent a length given in millimeters. We would like to convert all these distances from millimeters to inches. Sounds tricky to you? Script processing enables you to handle that task like any other replacement tasks. First we setup an expression that matches all numbers (integers and floating point):

(-?(\d+)\.?(\d*))

As a replacement we simply inject the full captured number:

%1

In order to apply some script on the replacement pattern activate capture processing (i. e. check mark), set process to Apply script, then activate the script processing editor option as shown below:

Finally copy and paste the following script within the script editor:

// Function to convert millimeters to inches

function convertMillimetersToInches(valueInMilimeters) {

return valueInMilimeters/25.4;

}

// We want to output a custom replacement for capture at index 1

if(replaceCommand.captureIndex==1) {

// Convert the numerical value captured at current

// index (i.e 1) from millimeters to inches

var convertedValue =

convertMillimetersToInches(replaceCommand.captureText);

// Get number of digits to format output

var digitCount =

replaceCommand.capturedTexts[2].toString().length;

// Take in account that the converted value is about ten times

// smaller, therefore we subtract one digit to represent it

// with same accuracy

digitCount -= 1;

// Get the number of captured decimals (original decimal count)

digitCount += replaceCommand.capturedTexts[3].toString().length;

// Ouput the formatted value with an equivalent number of digits

convertedValue.toPrecision(digitCount);

} else {

// For the other indexes (i.e. 0, 2, 3, 4) we simply output

// the current replacement text

replaceCommand.replacementText;

}

That's it! As an alternative we might remove the outer parentheses, then use %0 as replacement pattern instead of %1 and adjust the script accordingly.

5.10Using the output

The Output window is a multi-document preview for find and replace reports. Every time you search for an expression within files, a report will be outputted to the active console tab. The report includes links to files that contains searched/replaced expressions. A simple click on this link will open the file within Find & Replace Preview. A double-click on this link will open the file with a suitable application.

The console showing a report for found expressions. The report gives you some statistics.

5.11Editing preferences

The preferences window lets you customize some settings. This window is accessible via the menu Edit/Preferences... On Mac OS X, this entry is located in the application menu as usual.

The available preferences are:

• General

  • Language: This field indicates the current language used for the user interface. You must restart the application for this change taking effect.

  • Max length of matched expressions: This field indicates the maximum number of chars that can be matched by a regexp. It is not possible to find or replace a string that is longer than this value. For performance reasons, it is strongly recommended not to increase too much this value.

  • Used preferred text encoding if no acceptable codec is detected: Checking this box will force the preferred encoding whenever no acceptable encoding can be automatically proposed. This will force also the preferred codec for binary files.

• Find & Replace preview

  • Max size of preview: This field indicates the maximum number of chars that can be loaded in the preview window. If you try to load a file which is longer than this value, the end of the file will be ignored. For performance reasons, it is strongly recommended not to increase too much this value.

  • Color of found expressions: This editor shows the background color used to highlight found expressions.

  • Color of replacement text: This editor shows the background color used to highlight replaced text.

  • Wrap lines: Checking this box will cause words to be wrapped at the right edge of the text area. Wrapping occurs at whitespace, keeping whole words intact.

  • Activate syntax highlighting: Checking this box will activate syntax highlighting in the preview area. Syntax highlighting is only available for JavaScript, C/C++ and XML/HTML files.

The preferences window with default settings

In order to restore the default settings, simply click on Restore Defaults.

6 Tips and tricks

6.1Saving your work

All sections containing this button support persistent serialization. Therefore, you can save an expression alongside with its replacement pattern and script, as well as all components for searching and filtering files. Of course the twin button enables you to load a file previously saved.

The File menu provides a way of saving and loading the full content of the interface. In fact, using the File/Save menu is almost equivalent to concatenate all files generated by all buttons of all sub-windows.

Finally, if you open a fri file from a sub-window button (e.g.: Find & Replace Editor), only content related to this sub-window will be loaded. Hence you can easily load only a part of a file saved from the File/Save menu. This also means that if you open a file generated from a sub-window inside another sub-window, nothing will be loaded. In the same way, opening a file generated from a specific sub-window with the the File/Save menu, only loads the content of the specific sub-window, leaving all other windows intact.

All saved files are automatically suffixed with fri. They are called UI files (i.e.: User Interface File) for Find & Replace It!.

6.2 Multi-document tabs

Some components use tabs to display multiple documents. To manually open a new document/tab, use this button . To close a document/tab, click on the button located on the corresponding tab.

6.3 Working with text areas

6.3.1 Editing text

This is the list of key bindings which are implemented for editing:

Keypresses	Action
Backspace	Deletes the character to the left of the cursor.
Delete	Deletes the character to the right of the cursor.
Ctrl+C	Copy the selected text to the clipboard.
Ctrl+Insert	Copy the selected text to the clipboard.
Ctrl+K	Deletes to the end of the line.
Ctrl+V	Pastes the clipboard text into text edit.
Shift+Insert	Pastes the clipboard text into text edit.
Ctrl+X	Deletes the selected text and copies it to the clipboard.
Shift+Delete	Deletes the selected text and copies it to the clipboard.
Ctrl+Z	Undoes the last operation.
Ctrl+Y	Redoes the last operation.
Left	Moves the cursor one character to the left.
Ctrl+Left	Moves the cursor one word to the left.
Right	Moves the cursor one character to the right.
Ctrl+Right	Moves the cursor one word to the right.
Up	Moves the cursor one line up.
Down	Moves the cursor one line down.
PageUp	Moves the cursor one page up.
PageDown	Moves the cursor one page down.
Home	Moves the cursor to the beginning of the line.
Ctrl+Home	Moves the cursor to the beginning of the text.
End	Moves the cursor to the end of the line.
Ctrl+End	Moves the cursor to the end of the text.
Alt+Wheel	Scrolls the page horizontally (the Wheel is the mouse wheel).

To select (mark) text hold down the Shift key whilst pressing one of the movement keystrokes, for example,ﾠShift+Rightﾠwill select the character to the right, andﾠShift+Ctrl+Rightﾠwill select the word to the right, etc.

6.3.2 Undo/redo changes

It is possible to undo and redo any change made in a text area when this area is editable. On the Edit tool bar or in the Edit menu, simply click on:

• Undo (Ctrl+Z)

• Redo (Ctrl+Y)

6.3.3 Changing display

The commands located in the Text Display menu let you change the appearance of the active text zone content:

• Zoom out (Ctrl++)

• Zoom in (Ctrl+-)

• Select a font

All these commands are available for all text area int the software but they only apply to the last area that has been activated. Therefore you might have to click somewhere inside a text area to get a result.

The default font and zoom can be restored with the Text Display/Restore default font command.

It is possible to print the content of the active text area through the Text Display/Print... command.

6.3.4Searching for text

It is possible to search for text within any text area of the graphical interface. Simply click on in the Edit tool bar or in the Edit menu. This will show up the Find Text window:

The search will occur in the last area that has been activated. The background is colorized in green when there is a match, in red when there is no match.

6.4 Multi file selection in the found files list

To operate on many files at once it is possible to use the context menu on the Found files list. This menu let you act on the the current selection. As shown below, possible actions on selected files are: toggling check marks, selecting encoding, loading files in the preview. Applying an action on a selection of files. Note that Open file in test preview will open all selected files as distinct documents within Find & Replace Preview.

6.5 Get examples

There are some sample files shipped with Find Replace It!. Under Windows and Linux these files are located within the following directory:

<application install dir>/res/examples

On Mac OS X, these files are located in:

<application install dir>/Find & Replace It!.app/Contents/Resources/examples

The files suffixed with fri are UI files (i.e.: User Interface File) for Find & Replace It!. Such files contain stored user interface data and can be opened with buttons.

The files suffixed with .txt are sample data provided for convenience, in order to easily test the capabilities of Find & Replace It!.

Most examples provided alongside Find & Replace It! are available as a separate package which can be downloaded from http://www.dprog.ch/home/download/ (see Find & Replace It! Advanced Replacement Examples).

6.6 Debugging script

When willing to script some replacement texts it is convenient to debug the script. Find & Replace It! comes with an integrated debugger. To start the debugger, click on the Execute in debugger button located under the script editor. The debugger will show up:

Script debugger in action. On the right we can see the 'Locals' dock window which displays the current context provided by the 'replaceCommand' object.

A user manual for script debugger is available at http://doc.trolltech.com/4.6/qtscriptdebugger-manual.html

7Regular expressions¹

A regular expression, or "regexp", is a pattern for matching substrings in a text. This is useful in many contexts, e.g.:

Searching	A regexp provides more powerful pattern matching than simple substring matching, e.g., match one of the words mail, letter or correspondence, but none of the words email, mailman, mailer, letterbox, etc.
Search and Replace	A regexp can replace all occurrences of a substring with a different substring, e.g., replace all occurrences of &with & except where the & is already followed by an amp;.

The Find & Replace It! regexp is modeled on Perl's regexp language. It fully supports Unicode. The regexp can also be used in a simpler, Wildcard mode that is similar to the functionality found in command shells. The syntax rules used by regexp can be changed through the Syntax combo box. In particular, the pattern syntax can be set to Simple text, which means the pattern to be matched is interpreted as a plain string, i.e., special characters (e.g., backslash) are not escaped.

A good text on regexps is Mastering Regular Expressions (Third Edition) by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl, ISBN 0-596-52812-4.

7.1Introduction

Regexps are built up from expressions, quantifiers, and assertions. The simplest expression is a character, e.g. x or 5. An expression can also be a set of characters enclosed in square brackets. [ABCD] will match an A or a B or a C or a D. We can write this same expression as [A-D], and an experession to match any captital letter in the English alphabet is written as [A-Z].

A quantifier specifies the number of occurrences of an expression that must be matched. x{1,1} means match one and only one x. x{1,5} means match a sequence of x characters that contains at least one x but no more than five.

Note that in general regexps cannot be used to check for balanced brackets or tags. For example, a regexp can be written to match an opening html <b> and its closing </b>, if the <b> tags are not nested, but if the <b> tags are nested, that same regexp will match an opening <b> tag with the wrong closing </b>. For the fragment <b>bold <b>bolder</b></b>, the first <b> would be matched with the first </b>, which is not correct. However, it is possible to write a regexp that will match nested brackets or tags correctly, but only if the number of nesting levels is fixed and known. If the number of nesting levels is not fixed and known, it is impossible to write a regexp that will not fail.

Suppose we want a regexp to match integers in the range 0 to 99. At least one digit is required, so we start with the expression [0-9]{1,1}, which matches a single digit exactly once. This regexp matches integers in the range 0 to 9. To match integers up to 99, increase the maximum number of occurrences to 2, so the regexp becomes [0-9]{1,2}. This regexp satisfies the original requirement to match integers from 0 to 99, but it will also match integers that occur in the middle of strings. If we want the matched integer to be the whole string, we must use the anchor assertions, ^ (caret) and $ (dollar). When ^ is the first character in a regexp, it means the regexp must match from the beginning of the string. When $ is the last character of the regexp, it means the regexp must match to the end of the string. The regexp becomes ^[0-9]{1,2}$. Note that assertions, e.g. ^ and $, do not match characters but locations in the string.

If you have seen regexps described elsewhere, they may have looked different from the ones shown here. This is because some sets of characters and some quantifiers are so common that they have been given special symbols to represent them.[0-9] can be replaced with the symbol \d. The quantifier to match exactly one occurrence, {1,1}, can be replaced with the expression itself, i.e. x{1,1} is the same as x. So our 0 to 99 matcher could be written as ^\d{1,2}$. It can also be written ^\d\d{0,1}$, i.e. From the start of the string, match a digit, followed immediately by 0 or 1 digits. In practice, it would be written as ^\d\d?$. The ? is shorthand for the quantifier {0,1}, i.e. 0 or 1 occurrences. ? makes an expression optional. The regexp^\d\d?$ means From the beginning of the string, match one digit, followed immediately by 0 or 1 more digit, followed immediately by end of string.

To write a regexp that matches one of the words mail or letter or correspondence but does not match words that contain these words, e.g., email, mailman, mailer, and letterbox, start with a regexp that matches mail. Expressed fully, the regexp is m{1,1}a{1,1}i{1,1}l{1,1}, but because a character expression is automatically quantified by {1,1}, we can simplify the regexp to mail, i.e., an m followed by an a followed by an i followed by an l. Now we can use the vertical bar |, which means “or”, to include the other two words, so our regexp for matching any of the three words becomes mail|letter|correspondence. Match mail or letter or correspondence. While this regexp will match one of the three words we want to match, it will also match words we don't want to match, e.g., email. To prevent the regexp from matching unwanted words, we must tell it to begin and end the match at word boundaries. First we enclose our regexp in parentheses, (mail|letter|correspondence). Parentheses group expressions together, and they identify a part of the regexp that we wish to capture. Enclosing the expression in parentheses allows us to use it as a component in more complex regexps. It also allows us to examine which of the three words was actually matched. To force the match to begin and end on word boundaries, we enclose the regexp in \b word boundary assertions: \b(mail|letter|correspondence)\b. Now the regexp means: Match a word boundary, followed by the regexp in parentheses, followed by a word boundary. The \b assertion matches a position in the regexp, not a character. A word boundary is any non-word character, e.g., a space, newline, or the beginning or ending of a string.

If we want to replace ampersand characters with the HTML entity &amp;, the regexp to match is simply &. But this regexp will also match ampersands that have already been converted to HTML entities. We want to replace only ampersands that are not already followed by amp;. For this, we need the negative lookahead assertion, (?!__). The regexp can then be written as &(?!amp;), i.e. Match an ampersand that is not followed by amp;.

If we want to count all the occurrences of Eric and Eirik in a string, two valid solutions are \b(Eric|Eirik)\b and \bEi?ri[ck]\b. The word boundary assertion \b is required to avoid matching words that contain either name, e.g. Ericsson. Note that the second regexp matches more spellings than we want: Eric, Erik, Eiric and Eirik.

Some of the examples discussed above are implemented in the examples section.

Regexps can match case insensitively using the Case sensitive check box, and can use non-greedy matching when the Minimal match mark is checked.

7.2Characters and abbreviations for sets of characters

Element	Meaning
c	A character represents itself unless it has a special regexp meaning. e.g. c matches the character c.
\c	A character that follows a backslash matches the character itself, except as specified below. e.g., To match a literal caret at the beginning of a string, write \^.
\a	Matches the ASCII bell (BEL, 0x07).
\f	Matches the ASCII form feed (FF, 0x0C).
\n	Matches the ASCII line feed (LF, 0x0A, Unix newline).
\r	Matches the ASCII carriage return (CR, 0x0D).
\t	Matches the ASCII horizontal tab (HT, 0x09).
\v	Matches the ASCII vertical tab (VT, 0x0B).
\xhhhh	Matches the Unicode character corresponding to the hexadecimal number hhhh (between 0x0000 and 0xFFFF).
\0ooo (i.e., \zero ooo)	matches the ASCII/Latin1 character for the octal number ooo (between 0 and 0377).
. (dot)	Matches any character (including newline).
\d	Matches a digit.
\D	Matches a non-digit.
\s	Matches a whitespace character including line separators.
\S	Matches a non-whitespace character.
\w	Matches a word character (letters, numbers, marks and '_').
\W	Matches a non-word character.
\n	The n-th backreference, e.g. \1, \2, etc.

7.3Sets of characters

Square brackets mean match any character contained in the square brackets. The character set abbreviations described above can appear in a character set in square brackets. Except for the character set abbreviations and the following two exceptions, characters do not have special meanings in square brackets.

^	The caret negates the character set if it occurs as the first character (i.e. immediately after the opening square bracket).[abc] matches a or b or c, but [^abc] matches anything but a or b or c.
-	The dash indicates a range of characters. [W-Z] matches W or X or Y or Z.

Using the predefined character set abbreviations is more portable than using character ranges across platforms and languages. For example, [0-9] matches a digit in Western alphabets but \d matches a digit in any alphabet.

Note: In other regexp documentation, sets of characters are often called "character classes".

7.4Quantifiers

By default, an expression is automatically quantified by {1,1}, i.e. it should occur exactly once. In the following list, E stands for expression. An expression is a character, or an abbreviation for a set of characters, or a set of characters in square brackets, or an expression in parentheses.

E?	Matches zero or one occurrences of E. This quantifier means The previous expression is optional, because it will match whether or not the expression is found. E? is the same as E{0,1}. e.g., dents? matches dent or dents.
E+	Matches one or more occurrences of E. E+ is the same as E{1,}. e.g., 0+ matches 0, 00, 000, etc.
E*	Matches zero or more occurrences of E. It is the same as E{0,}. The * quantifier is often used in error where +should be used. For example, if \s*$ is used in an expression to match strings that end in whitespace, it will match every string because \s*$ means Match zero or more whitespaces followed by end of string. The correct regexp to match strings that have at least one trailing whitespace character is \s+$.
E{n}	Matches exactly n occurrences of E. E{n} is the same as repeating E n times. For example, x{5} is the same as xxxxx. It is also the same as E{n,n}, e.g. x{5,5}.
E{n,}	Matches at least n occurrences of E.
E{,m}	Matches at most m occurrences of E. E{,m} is the same as E{0,m}.
E{n,m}	Matches at least n and at most m occurrences of E.

To apply a quantifier to more than just the preceding character, use parentheses to group characters together in an expression. For example, tag+ matches a t followed by an a followed by at least one g, whereas (tag)+ matches at least one occurrence of tag.

Note: Quantifiers are normally "greedy". They always match as much text as they can. For example, 0+ matches the first zero it finds and all the consecutive zeros after the first zero. Applied to 20005, it matches20005. Quantifiers can be made non-greedy through the check box Minimal match.

7.5Capturing text

Parentheses allow us to group elements together so that we can quantify and capture them. For example if we have the expression mail|letter|correspondence that matches a string we know that one of the words matched but not which one. Using parentheses allows us to "capture" whatever is matched within their bounds, so if we used(mail|letter|correspondence) and matched this regexp against the string I sent you some email we can use the %x replacement pattern to extract the matched characters, in this case mail.

We can use captured text within the regexp itself. To refer to the captured text we use “backreferences” which are indexed from 1, the same as for %x. For example we could search for duplicate words in a string using \b(\w+)\W+\1\b which means match a word boundary followed by one or more word characters followed by one or more non-word characters followed by the same text as the first parenthesized expression followed by a word boundary.

If we want to use parentheses purely for grouping and not for capturing we can use the non-capturing syntax, e.g. (?:green|blue). Non-capturing parentheses begin (?: and end ). In this example we match either green or blue but we do not capture the match so we only know whether or not we matched but not which color we actually found. Using non-capturing parentheses is more efficient than using capturing parentheses since the regexp engine has to do less book-keeping.

Captured text can be accessed in replacement pattern using %0 which returns the full matched expression, or using %i (with 1<i<=9) which returns the captured string at the given index.

Both capturing and non-capturing parentheses may be nested.

7.6Assertions

Assertions make some statement about the text at the point where they occur in the regexp but they do not match any characters. In the following list E stands for any expression.

^	The caret signifies the beginning of the string. If you wish to match a literal ^ you must escape it by writing \\^. For example, ^#include will only match strings which begin with the characters #include. (When the caret is the first character of a character set it has a special meaning, see Sets of Characters.)
$	The dollar signifies the end of the string. For example \d\s*$ will match strings which end with a digit optionally followed by whitespace. If you wish to match a literal $ you must escape it by writing \\$.
\b	A word boundary. For example the regexp \bOK\b means match immediately after a word boundary (e.g. start of string or whitespace) the letter O then the letter K immediately before another word boundary (e.g. end of string or whitespace). But note that the assertion does not actually match any whitespace so if we write (\bOK\b) and we have a match it will only contain OK even if the string is It's OK now.
\B	A non-word boundary. This assertion is true wherever \b is false. For example if we searched for \Bon\B in "Left on" the match would fail (space and end of string aren't non-word boundaries), but it would match in tonne.
(?=E)	Positive lookahead. This assertion is true if the expression matches at this point in the regexp. For example, const(?=\s+char) matches const whenever it is followed by char, as in static const char *. (Compare with const\s+char, which matches static const char *).
(?!E)	Negative lookahead. This assertion is true if the expression does not match at this point in the regexp. For example, const(?!\s+char) matches const except when it is followed by char.

7.7Wildcard matching

Most command shells such as bash or cmd.exe support "file globbing", the ability to identify a group of files by using wildcards. The Syntax combo box is used to switch between regexp and wildcard mode. Wildcard matching is much simpler than full regexps and has only four features:

c	Any character represents itself apart from those mentioned below. Thus c matches the character c.
?	Matches any single character. It is the same as . in full regexps.
*	Matches zero or more of any characters. It is the same as .* in full regexps.
[...]	Sets of characters can be represented in square brackets, similar to full regexps. Within the character class, like outside, backslash has no special meaning.

In the mode Wildcard, the wildcard characters cannot be escaped. In the mode Wildcard Unix, the character '' escapes the wildcard.

For example if we are in wildcard mode and have strings which contain filenames we could identify HTML files with *.html. This will match zero or more characters followed by a dot followed by h, t, m and l.

Wildcard matching can be convenient because of its simplicity, but any wildcard regexp can be defined using full regexps, e.g. .*\.html?$. Notice that we can't match both .html and .htm files with a wildcard unless we use *.htm* which will also match test.html.bak. A full regexp gives us the precision we need, .*\.html?$.

7.8Notes for Perl users

Most of the character class abbreviations supported by Perl are supported by regexp's, see characters and abbreviations for sets of characters.

In regexps, apart from within character classes, ^ always signifies the start of the string, so carets must always be escaped unless used for that purpose. In Perl the meaning of caret varies automagically depending on where it occurs so escaping it is rarely necessary. The same applies to $ which in regexps always signifies the end of the string.

Regexp's quantifiers are the same as Perl's greedy quantifiers. Non-greedy matching cannot be applied to individual quantifiers, but can be applied to all the quantifiers in the pattern. For example, to match the Perl regexp ro+?m requires: ro+m and Minimal match=true

The equivalent of Perl's /i option is Case sensitive check box turned on.

In regexp . matches any character, therefore all regexps have the equivalent of Perl's /s option. Regexp does not have an equivalent to Perl's /m option, but this can be emulated in various ways for example by splitting the input into lines or by looping with a regexp that searches for newlines.

Because regexp is string oriented, there are no \A, \Z, or \z assertions. The \G assertion is not supported but can be emulated in a loop.

Perl's $& is %0. There are no regexp equivalents for $`, $' or $+. Perl's capturing variables, $1, $2, ... correspond to \1, \2 inside search pattern and %1, %2 inside replacement pattern, etc.

Perl's extended /x syntax is not supported, nor are directives, e.g. (?i), or regexp comments, e.g. (?#comment).

Both zero-width positive and zero-width negative look-ahead assertions (?=pattern) and (?!pattern) are supported with the same syntax as Perl. Perl's look-behind assertions, "independent" sub-expressions and conditional expressions are not supported.

Non-capturing parentheses are also supported, with the same (?:pattern) syntax.

7.9Examples

^\d\d?$
Match integers from 0 to 99
123	Do not match
-6	Do not match
6	Match

The third string matches 6. This is a simple validation regexp for integers in the range 0 to 99.

^\S+$
Match strings without whitespaces
Hello world	Do not match
This_is-OK	Match

The second string matches This_is-OK. We've used the character set abbreviation \S (non-whitespace) and the anchors to match strings which contain no whitespace.

In the following example we match strings containing mail or letter or correspondence but only match whole words i.e. not email.

\b(mail|letter|correspondence)\b
Match words mail, letter and correspondence
I sent you an email	Do not match
Please write the letter	Match

The second string matches Please write the letter. The word letter is also captured (because of the parentheses). We can see what text we've captured like this: %1 = \1 = letter

This will capture the text from the first set of capturing parentheses (counting capturing left parentheses from left to right). The parentheses are counted from 1 since %0 (\0) is the whole matched regexp (equivalent to & in most regexp engines).

&(?!amp;)
Match ampersands but not &
This & that	Match one occurrence at index 6
His & hers & theirs	Match one occurrence at index 16

8Licensing information

8.1 Licenses

The terms “This Sofware” below means Find & Replace It!.

By installing and/or using this Software, you are confirming your acceptance of the Software and agreeing to become bound by the terms of the agreement located at http:/www.dprog.ch/ multimedia/findreplaceit-license-en.html.

This Software uses the Qt open source library from Nokia Corporation. This library is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 plus some exceptions (see http://doc.trolltech.com/4.6/lgpl.html). The Qt binaries and source code are available for download at http://qt.nokia.com/downloads. You are free to use your own versions of the Qt dynamic libraries instead of the ones shipped with the application. See the 'Customizing Install' section of install.txt for more details. You are permitted to modify this Software for your own use only. Reverse engineering for debugging such modifications is allowed. For more details about licenses used by Qt please read the following links:

• http://doc.trolltech.com/4.6/licenses.html

• http://doc.trolltech.com/4.6/3rdparty.html

This Software uses the ICU open source library from IBM Corporation. ICU is a mature, widely used set of C/C++ and Java libraries providing Unicode and Globalization support for software applications. ICU is widely portable and gives applications the same results on all platforms and between C/C++ and Java software. ICU is released under a nonrestrictive open source license that is suitable for use with both commercial software and with other open source or free software (see http://source.icu-project.org/repos/icu/icu/trunk/license.html).

This Software uses the Syntax Highlighters plugins from Philippe Docourt. This is a collection of Qt plugins for managing syntax highlighting. It allows you to dynamically add syntax higlighting capabilities to your Qt applications. Currently it supports syntax highlighting for qscript, C++ and xml documents. This collection of plugins is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.txt). The source code of thess plugins are available for download at http://www.dprog.net/joomla/products-topmenu-29/syntax-highlighters.

The Linux installer uses an auto-extractable archive generated by makeself. makeself.sh is a small shell script developped by Stéphane Peter that generates a self-extractable archive (see http://megastep.org/makeself).

The Windows installer is generated by NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System), an open source system to create Windows installers (see http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page).

This Software is built with the Qt Integration Scripts package from Philippe Docourt (see http://www.dprog.net/joomla/products-topmenu-29/qt-integration-scripts).

Most of the icons used in this Software are free icons, provided under either the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.txt)or in the public domain. A special thanks to the authors:

• The Tango project members, authors of Tango icon theme: http://tango.freedesktop.org/ Tango_Desktop_Project

• Everaldo Coelho, author of Christal icon collection: http://www.everaldo.com/crystal/

• David Vignoni, author of Nuvola icon set: http://www.icon-king.com/projects/nuvola/

• Nokia Corporation, author of Qt icons: http://qt.nokia.com/

8.2 Trademarks

dProg, the dProg logo, Find & Replace it! and the Find & Replace It! logo are trademarks of dProg - Philippe Docourt in Switzerland.

• Nokia, the Nokia logo, Qt, and the Qt logo are trademarks of Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiaries in Finland and other countries.

• Intel, Intel Inside (logos), MMX and Pentium are ® trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

• Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both.

• Linux is a ^® trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries or both.

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• UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.

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