Help with simple regex for find and replace

zakman · 09-26-2025, 01:03 PM

Making some edits to my copies of Joel Shepherd's Spiral Wars series - in particular, capitalizing the name of one of the alien races (the Alo) throughout the book.

What's a regex that would find all instances of 'alo', just the three letters, and ignoring its appearance elsewhere (such as in 'alone', etc)?

theducks · 09-26-2025, 01:12 PM

Simpler (maybe)
Open the spell checker: All words
Select your word an the left (you can sort by column), Enter the replacement (instead of selecting from list) on the right

lomkiri · 09-26-2025, 03:43 PM

Very clever, theducks :-). That's the easy way.

Otherwise, as a direct answer to the OP, this regex will select "alo" and only that:
\balo\b
(\b means word boundary)

09-26-2025, 01:03 PM	#1
zakman Enthusiast Posts: 36 Karma: 2119794 Join Date: Jan 2016 Device: Kindle Paperwhite 2019	Help with simple regex for find and replace Making some edits to my copies of Joel Shepherd's Spiral Wars series - in particular, capitalizing the name of one of the alien races (the Alo) throughout the book. What's a regex that would find all instances of 'alo', just the three letters, and ignoring its appearance elsewhere (such as in 'alone', etc)?

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09-26-2025, 01:12 PM	#2
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 31,205 Karma: 60406678 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	Simpler (maybe) Open the spell checker: All words Select your word an the left (you can sort by column), Enter the replacement (instead of selecting from list) on the right

09-26-2025, 03:43 PM	#3
lomkiri Groupie Posts: 173 Karma: 1497966 Join Date: Jul 2021 Device: N/A	Very clever, theducks :-). That's the easy way. Otherwise, as a direct answer to the OP, this regex will select "alo" and only that: \balo\b (\b means word boundary)

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