Sigil Index of first lines

[Edmundb]

I'm using Sigil for the first time to create a poetry book and there is a requirement for an index of first lines. I have marked the first lines of the poem as an index entry and then created the index.
I think I must be doing something wrong. In the index the first line appears but without a link. The link is provided by clicking on a number 1 that appears next to all the entries. The html looks like

 <div class="sgc-index-entry">
     first line of the poem
 <a href="link to the poem">1</a>
    </div>

and I can fix the problem by manually replacing the '1' with the first line of the poem
<

div class="sgc-index-entry">
 <a href="link to the poem"> first line of the poem</a>
    </div>

This works fine, but there are over 200 poems and I'd really appreciate finding a quicker way.
Can anybody help?

[Tex2002ans]

Step 1: Open up the Find/Replace (Ctrl+F) or press the menu Search > Find & Replace.

Step 2: Make sure you have the Mode box set as Regex.

If you want to be safe, only have the Index open in Sigil, and change the 2nd dropdown to "Current File". This will make sure it won't go replacing through your entire book (although it shouldn't).

Step 3: Put this in the fields:

Search: <div class="sgc-index-entry">\s+(.+?)\s+(<a href="[^"]+">)\d+</a>\s+</div>
Replace: <div class="sgc-index-entry">\2\1</a></div>

What that will do is take your example code, and convert it into:

<div class="sgc-index-entry"><a href="link to the poem">first line of the poem</a></div>

It takes the link from around #1 and wraps it around the entry instead.

Alternate #3: Personally, what I would do is use:

Replace: <p class="indexfirstline">\2\1</a></p>

and adjust the CSS. The code would be much more readable.

[Edmundb]

Thank you very much. Both methods work for me and saved a considerable amount of time. - Edmundb