removing the paragraphs tags if paragraph starts with lower case

[_gKorg_]

Hi everyone. I have an old book a friend gave me and the paragraphs are all messed up. I'm trying to clean it up and it would be amazing if there was a function like "merge with the upper paragraph if the current paragraph starts with a low-case word". Is there something like this?
Is there otherwise a way to change directly in the preview without going into the html editor? It's easier to remove a the space between paragraphs than tags...
thank you for your help

[lomkiri]

Find : </p>\s*<p>(\p{Ll}.*?</p>)
Replace : \x20\1
Mode : Regex
with "dot all" and "case sensitive" checked 
(\x20 is a space)

Note : it will merge only if the paragraph starts with a lower case letter. It won't if it starts with space or punctuation. If you want to give the possibility to have a space before the letter, it will give :

</p>\s*<p>(\s?\p{Ll}.*?</p>)

but you may have 2 spaces before the targeted word, which is not a problem because it won't be visible in the text (to avoid this, we could put a very simple regex-function instead of the "<space>\1" replace)

[mikapanja]

Originally Posted by lomkiri

[code]Find : </p>\s*<p>(\p{l}.*?</p>)

This works if the next paragraph starts with a simple <p>. What would be a relevant regex if it starts with a named class?

[lomkiri]

Originally Posted by mikapanja

This works if the next paragraph starts with a simple <p>. What would be a relevant regex if it starts with a named class?

You're perfectly right, I've just given the idea, it is easy then to adapt the regex.
This one will capture a <p> with classes :

</p>\s*<p[^>]*>(\p{Ll}.*?</p>)

[lomkiri]

I realized that if there was a succession of several paragraphs all beginning with a lowercase letter, my regex will capture only one every two, because the pointer will stop after the </p>, so the regex won't target the next paragraph, but will go on and find only the second next one, leaving one unchanged. It would be then necessary to make various passages to target all of them in the sequence (not a big deal, but unesthetic).

This can easily be resolved if we don't capture the last </p>, but use a positive lookahead (for </p>) instead, so the pointer will stop before the </p>, and the regex is ready to capture the next paragraph if it is a candidate.

With this regex, all paragraphs will be targeted during the first passage :

</p>\s*<p[^>]*>(\p{Ll}.*?)(?=</p>)

or, if we want to target as well paragraphs starting with <space><lowercase>:

</p>\s*<p[^>]*>(\s?\p{Ll}.*?)(?=</p>)

Replace is still the same: \x20\1
(\x20 is a space)

[mikapanja]

Thanks, lomkiri!

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by _gKorg_

Hi everyone.

Hey, welcome to MobileRead!

Originally Posted by _gKorg_

I have an old book a friend gave me and the paragraphs are all messed up. I'm trying to clean it up and it would be amazing if there was a function like "merge with the upper paragraph if the current paragraph starts with a low-case word". Is there something like this?

Yes:

• 2022: "False paragraph breaks & RegEx"

and in this thread, specifically, I showed the exact 3 regex I've been using for 12+ years:

• 2020: "Regex Examples" (Post #689)

- - -

If you want a more "GUI-friendly way" of doing things—and you're more familiar with Word or LibreOffice—I described a lot of this stuff in:

• 2023: /r/LibreOffice: "In libreoffice writer, with Find and Replace Regex, '/n' is only recognized as a Shift+Enter New Line. What's the Regex expression for Regular Enter New Line?"

Of course, using Sigil or Calibre and fixing it directly in the code is the best + SUPER quick (if you use those 3 regexes, that'll take care of 99% cases in a single shot!).

Trying to accomplish the same thing in Word/LibreOffice is clunky/limiting, and would take a lot more work.