GREP in InDesign CS3

Repeat: Sequences of Characters

In InDesign CS2, to replace sequences of space characters with just a single space, you had to repeatedly replace two spaces with one until there were no more double spaces left. In CS3, there is a much better method: search any sequence of more than one space and replace with a single one: find \x{20}\x{20}+ and replace with \x{20}. As we've seen earlier, the plus is a repeat character and means "at least once," so that the expression paraphrases as "find a space followed by a sequence of at least one space." There are several repeat characters; they're all in the Repeat flyout (see Figure 7).

Figure 7. Repeat options

? Zero or One Time

To find British and American spellings of, say, harbour, search for harbou?r, which finds harbour and harbor. The scope of ? is just one character, so in this example it applies only to the u. The expression paraphrases as "find harbo, perhaps followed by u (or, followed by zero or one occurrence of u), followed by r. To extend the scope of ? to more characters, group them with parentheses: (19)?\d\d finds all two-digit numbers, as well as four-digit numbers whose first two digits are 19. You can combine this with alternation: (18|19|20)?\d\d matches two-digit numbers, as well as four-digit numbers that begin with 18, 19, or 20.

Finding Parentheses

( and ) have a special meaning in GREP, namely to group items. To find parentheses ...