search and remove two spaces

jlocicero · 04-24-2015, 03:04 PM

I want to remove instances of two spaces in a book I am editing. If I just seach for " " (two spaces) I get a lot of hits in parts of the book that are not book content - like css code.

What search term can I use to find two spaces in only text of the book?

eschwartz · 04-24-2015, 03:20 PM

If you have CSS in the HTML files, move it to a stylesheet. The search will only check HTML files (there are a few filters there).

Aside from that... it really, truly doesn't matter if you remove spaces from the stylesheets.
If you really want, replace everything and then use Beautify to fix the indentation.

Searching for spaces only in the HTML is too complex to be done with a trivial regex, you need to use specialized tools. For example, BeautifulSoup in python. Tools that were written to parse HTML, whereas regex is designed to parse text strings and has no idea what is in them.

theducks · 04-24-2015, 03:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlocicero

I want to remove instances of two spaces in a book I am editing. If I just seach for " " (two spaces) I get a lot of hits in parts of the book that are not book content - like css code.

What search term can I use to find two spaces in only text of the book?

NOT TESTED

REGEX

Code:

([(\w)\s{2,}(\w)

find 2 or more space between words

Code:

\1\2

total removal

you might want 1 after the \1

most render engines collapse multiple consecutive spaces anyway, so except for file size growth... why bother
EXCEPTION: inside a <Pre tag

theducks · 04-24-2015, 03:23 PM

Ninja'd by eschwartz

04-24-2015, 03:04 PM	#1
jlocicero Member Posts: 15 Karma: 12678 Join Date: Apr 2013 Device: none	search and remove two spaces I want to remove instances of two spaces in a book I am editing. If I just seach for " " (two spaces) I get a lot of hits in parts of the book that are not book content - like css code. What search term can I use to find two spaces in only text of the book?

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04-24-2015, 03:20 PM	#2
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,421 Karma: 85400180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	If you have CSS in the HTML files, move it to a stylesheet. The search will only check HTML files (there are a few filters there). Aside from that... it really, truly doesn't matter if you remove spaces from the stylesheets. If you really want, replace everything and then use Beautify to fix the indentation. Searching for spaces only in the HTML is too complex to be done with a trivial regex, you need to use specialized tools. For example, BeautifulSoup in python. Tools that were written to parse HTML, whereas regex is designed to parse text strings and has no idea what is in them.

04-24-2015, 03:23 PM	#4
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 31,249 Karma: 61360164 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	Ninja'd by eschwartz

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