Q: RegEx to join chapter number and title

[phossler]

I have a bunch of entries with a Hx followed by the rest of the chapter title in <p> tags

<h1>Chapter 1:*</h1>
<p>The Title</p>

What I'd like is

<h1>Chapter 1: The Title</h1>

My Find was *</h1>\s*<p>(.*?)</p>

My Replace was \1</h1>

but instead of just the text up to the first </p>, all the text is selected

What am I doing wrong?

[doubleshuffle]

No Regex expert here, but just tested this and it seems to do what you want it to do:

Find:

<h1>(.*)</h1>
<p>(.*)</p>

Replace:

<h1>\1 \2</h1>

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by phossler

I have a bunch of entries with a Hx followed by the rest of the chapter title in <p> tags

<h1>Chapter 1:*</h1>
<p>The Title</p>

What I'd like is

<h1>Chapter 1: The Title</h1>

My Find was *</h1>\s*<p>(.*?)</p>

My Replace was \1</h1>

but instead of just the text up to the first </p>, all the text is selected

What am I doing wrong?

You're including the all of the <p> </p> in your find expression. That's why it's included: <p>(.*?)</p>

I'd suggest capturing the chapter number and the p contents with something like:

<h1>Chapter (\d+):</h1>\s+<p>([^>]*)</p>

Then replace with something like:

<h1>Chapter \1: \2</h1>

The * and + tokens in regex are for repetition (* is zero or more, and + is 1 or more). They follow something that may have multiple occurrences. Unless you're actually looking to match an asterisk character (in which case it should be escaped: \*) there's no reason to start an expression with "*". There's no indication of what might be repeating.

[phossler]

@doubleshuffle + @DiapDealer --

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Much easier to follow

I ended up adding this to my SavedSearches

Find: <h1>(.*?)</h1>\s+<p>([^>]*)</p>
Replace: <h1>\1 <br/>\2</h1>


I went back and I have NO idea how I pasted the '*' into the Find expression in my original question. It wasn't in the Find box, so I'll blame the keyboard???