Re: Searching Problem

[Dan Emory <danemory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 03:07 PM 4/1/99 -0500, Monaco, James wrote:
>Hello Framers,
>
>Is it really possible that there is no way in FM to search for a string
>that includes punctuation or spaces as well as characters??! I want to find
>strings that begin with a line beginning(^) and end with a bullet (*) and
>include spaces and punctuation. The proper GREP way to do this would be
>
>^[^*]*
>
>Doesn't work in FM.
===================================================================
FM ought to have a wildcard character that represents all characters,
including spaces and punctuation, ala GREP, but it doesn't.

Not that it's much consolation, but what you seem to be looking for is any
instance of a bullet that does not start a line. If that's the case, and
what you want to do is force a paragraph break before each bullet that
doesn't start a line, proceed as follows:

1. Specify bullet (\b), as the search string, and specify \P\b as the
replacement string.

2. Commence the search. Mark the first found instance of a bullet by
preceding it with some symbol (e.g., "@"). This will tell you when to
terminate the search.

3. Proceed with the search. Evaluate each found instance of a bullet to see
if it's at the beginning of a line. If it's not, you change it, else don't
change it and resume the search. Finally when the search again finds the
bullet instance that's preceded by the @ symbol, you know you're done, and
you can delete the @ symbol.
     ====================
     | Nullius in Verba |
     ====================
Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
10044 Adams Ave. #208, Huntington Beach, CA 92646
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