Deleting Citation Numbers

[Gwaredd]

I have a rather large novel that I'm editing since it was poorly formatted. I read all my books on a Kindle so tables of content are a bit of an encumbrance. So having removed the TOC I'm left with hundreds of tiny citation numbers throughout a 350 page book. Does any one know of a way to remove all of these at one time? Doing them individually will take weeks.

[user743]

which table of contents did you remove? if the other one is still there then I'm not sure you want to do this.

Can you post a example. you can probably remove them with one regex search and replace.

[mrmikel]

You will probably have to do it in three steps. And there is no way to reliably do it automatically.

But you can use [1-9] to search for single numbers, [1-9][0-9] for two numbers, [1-9][0-9][0-9] for three numbers. But since it will get all numbers, you will need to look at them all.

If they are surrounded consistently by a certain codes like <sup> or <i> or <b>, you can search for them.

If it is a pdf conversion particularly, you are going to have to look at all of them, albeit for a second or two. It will take minutes, not days, though I will concede the boredom.

[mzmm]

if you post an example of the citation numbers you'd get a better idea if it's possible/a good idea use a regex to remove them all

[eschwartz]

@mrmikel,

1 regex: http://regular-expressions.info/numericranges.html

I'd just stick with

[1-9][0-9]?[0-9]?

which is equivalent to all three of yours. The link has some nice frills though.

[Gwaredd]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

@mrmikel,

1 regex: http://regular-expressions.info/numericranges.html

I'd just stick with

[1-9][0-9]?[0-9]?

which is equivalent to all three of yours. The link has some nice frills though.

Ah, very nice. I didn't know such a thing existed. I will give it a go. The book I initially referred to is already been fixed; I had to do it by hand but since I'm retired I don't have anything better to do at times. Nevertheless, I am confronted with this from time to time so your suggestion will come in mighty handy.

Thanks mate!