Ungreedy matching in S&R

[BobC]

Is the (?U) PCRE modifier supposed to work in a search string in the editor ?

I keep getting an "unknown extension" error :

calibre, version 1.20.0
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>error</b>:unknown extension at position 2

calibre 1.20  isfrozen: True is64bit: False
Windows-XP-5.1.2600-SP3 Windows ('32bit', 'WindowsPE')
('Windows', 'XP', '5.1.2600')
Python 2.7.5
Windows: ('XP', '5.1.2600', 'SP3', 'Uniprocessor Free')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\tweak_book\boss.py", line 638, in search
  File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\tweak_book\search.py", line 292, in get_regex
  File "site-packages\regex\__init__.py", line 331, in compile
  File "site-packages\regex\__init__.py", line 481, in _compile
error: unknown extension at position 2

when I use the search expression :

(?U)([^\s])Chapter .*</span>

BobC

[kovidgoyal]

http://docs.python.org/2.7/library/re.html

[theducks]

The trailing '?' is a ungreedy quantifier

I regularly use:
for spelled numbering

(Chapter .+?)\w+

for digit numbering: (no need to worry about closing spans with this

(Chapter \d+)

[BobC]

@kovid

Thanks for the reference, I couldn't see what I was looking for at first in the help files.

@theducks

Thank you for pointing me to the appropriate non-greedy qualifier. I've now been able to strip out about 1500 pointless <span>...</span> elements from a book.

I did know about the /d+ notation but tend to use /d{1,} out of habit from a different regex variant I used in LibreOffice work.

BobC

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BobC

@kovid

Thanks for the reference, I couldn't see what I was looking for at first in the help files.

@theducks

Thank you for pointing me to the appropriate non-greedy qualifier. I've now been able to strip out about 1500 pointless <span>...</span> elements from a book.

I did know about the /d+ notation but tend to use /d{1,} out of habit from a different regex variant I used in LibreOffice work.

BobC

plus 1 or more
star 0 or more

your way can offer very precise control