Search and Replace bug <p></p> to </h4>

[MAH]

kovidgoyal called this bug report invalid and suggested I try here. So, here it is:

Bug description:

calibre version 7.22.0

macOS 13.7.1 (22H221)

Intel iMac 3.6 GHz 10-Core Intel Core i9


Certain search strings won’t show correct results over multiple files. The specific failure I am having today is searching for "<p></p>" to be replaced with "</h4>". I have 40 chapters for my book, and every chapter had the <p></p> needing to be replaced with </h4>. I could search and replace across all files for things like </h4> for </h4>, but the <p></p> for </h4> would only successfully replace on one HTML file at a time. This made me have to open each file in succession in order to accomplish the desired search and replace operation. I have other examples, but I will defer listing them for now. This is an easy string to try the problem with and my other examples have similar results. I used "Normal" and "Regex" as my search and replace mode to see if a different search mode would show different results. For all tries there was no change in returned results.

Help!

[Karellen]

Just tested it and found no problems with the S&R. All instances were changed...
Do you have "All text files" selected? Maybe you have selected "Current Page"?

[DNSB]

I went with the same assumption that @Karellen did that you had a header in each file shown as <h4>Blah de blah<p></p>. I created an epub with 72 chapters which checkepub was very unhappy with. I then did a search for <p></p> and replaced with </h4> and the operation ran over all 72 chapters without issue.

The only way I could duplicate your issue was to select Current file instead of All text files.

[retiredbiker]

Over the years I have had a few books where this happened. I'm pretty sure that the search and replace worked fine over the entire book at first, but then I did something, and it suddenly would only do one file at a time. There was a bit of discussion a couple of years ago, and I was unable to replicate it at the time. I've been waiting for a book where it happened again so I could trap it, but no luck so far.

[theducks]

I have this happn more than once.
Beautify the book.
There is something else (non-printing) on those lines and it is not consistent.
That usually clears it up

[MAH]

Originally Posted by theducks

I have this happn more than once.
Beautify the book.
There is something else (non-printing) on those lines and it is not consistent.
That usually clears it up

I will try this one.

For the other guys, I am running on an Intel iMac running Mac OS 13.x.x, so sometimes the search libraries are different between different versions of the OS or between OSs like Python on the Mac was always a version behind what was on Windows and I couldn’t run my updated Python programs until the Python libraries were updated for Mac. While not an expert, hence my visit here, I have been parsing code for 40+ years and running searches for same, so yeah I can read the tags at the bottom of the search box, and I am certain of the failures in the search described.

I haven’t done it yet, but I will probably try to update to Mac OS 15.x.x and see if things get better.

[MAH]

Originally Posted by theducks

I have this happn more than once.
Beautify the book.
There is something else (non-printing) on those lines and it is not consistent.
That usually clears it up

Originally Posted by MAH

I will try this one.

For the other guys, I am running on an Intel iMac running Mac OS 13.x.x, so sometimes the search libraries are different between different versions of the OS or between OSs like Python on the Mac was always a version behind what was on Windows and I couldn’t run my updated Python programs until the Python libraries were updated for Mac. While not an expert, hence my visit here, I have been parsing code for 40+ years and running searches for same, so yeah I can read the tags at the bottom of the search box, and I am certain of the failures in the search described.

I haven’t done it yet, but I will probably try to update to Mac OS 15.x.x and see if things get better.

Well, I updated to Mac OS 15.x and the problem continued. However, I used the “Beautify” command and it cleared the crud/detritus and my searches were doing everything at once like they should. So, theducks thank you very much for the sage advice. I really appreciate it!