[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by vijer

I want to search the file and remove all instances of <a id="pageXXX"></a> where XXX is the page number.

I have tried

[...]

What am I missing?

Let's break it down into 3 separate pieces:

Step 1. Find the link with an id of "page":

• <a id="page

Step 2. Find the numbers:

• ????????

Step 3. Find the closing quote + end of the link:

• "></a>

Steps #1 and #3 are simpler. You can just type those in just like a normal search!

But #2 is a little tricky:

How do you search for numbers in Regex?

Instead of doing 9 separate searches for:

• page1
• page2
• page3
• [...]
• page9

you can instead say: "Hey, after 'page', look for a number!"

This is where Regex's special symbols come into play:

Brackets [] stand for: "Look for a single character that is in this spot."

So [0123456789] says: "Hey, look for the number 0 OR the number 1 OR the number 2 ... OR the number 9".

Brackets are also special—you can also put in RANGES of characters:

Regex: page[0-9]

That says "Find the word 'page', then a number zero THROUGH nine".

But I don't just want to find single number... I want lots of numbers. How do I do that?

The plus sign + stands for "ONE OR MORE of the previous thing."

Regex: page[0-9]+

Now this says: "Find 'page', then find ONE OR MORE numbers zero through nine."

Putting It All Together

Let me color-code the 3 pieces:

• Step 1: <a id="page
• Step 2: [0-9]+
• Step 3: "></a>

so your combined regex will be:

Search: <a id="page[0-9]+"></a>

which will match:

<a href="page1"></a>
<a href="page27"></a>
<a href="page123"></a>
<a href="page999"></a>
<a href="page123456"></a>


* * * * *

Extra: Regex's Special Symbol: \d

Just like the plus sign is a special symbol, there are also a few others.

Instead of typing "[0-9]" "[0-9]" "[0-9]" all the time, there's a shortcut for that:

\d = "Matches any number"

So these 2 are equivalent:

• [0-9]
• \d

So this says: "Find ONE OR MORE of any number zero through nine":

• [0-9]+

and this says the same exact thing!:

• \d+

So the searches recommended by JSWolf + BeckyEbook do the same thing:

Search: <a id="page[0-9]+"></a>
Search: <a id="page\d+"></a>