Using Regular Expressions in Text Searches

Regular expressions are special patterns used to find and manipulate text, helping you locate specific information within texts.

You can use regular expressions when you find and replace text in a document. For example, "s.n" finds "sun" and "son".

1. Choose Edit - Find & Replace.

2. Click More Options to expand the dialog.

3. Select the Regular expressions check box.

4. In the Find box, type the search term and the regular expression(s) that you want to use in your search.

5. Click Find Next or Find All.

Regular Expression Examples

1. The regular expression for a single character is a period (.).

2. The regular expression for a word character \w, and \d for a decimal digit.

3. The regular expression for zero or more occurrences of the previous character is an asterisk. For example: "123*" finds "12" "123", and "1233".

4. The regular expression to search for zero or more occurrences of any character is a period and asterisk (.*).

5. The regular expression for one or more occurrences of the previous character is a plus sign (+). For example: "\w+" finds any word, "\d+" any number.

6. The regular expression for a tab character is \t. More generally, \s stands for all kinds of "spaces", like non-breaking space, carriage return ...

7. The regular expression for the end of a paragraph is a dollar sign ($). The regular expression for the start of a paragraph is a caret and a period (^.). The regular expression for an empty paragraph is ^$.