[TxMt] Re: Select and Replace: magic needed....

[Scott Haneda]

On Jun 15, 2009, at 11:11 AM, Nicholas Cole wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> Many years ago, in a state of innocence, I hard-coded my LaTeX  
> quotation marks.
>
>> Thus I have text that `looks like this'.
>
> I now find that it would have been MUCH better (if not essential) to  
> have done:
>
>> Thus I have text that \enquote{looks like this}
>
> I can't do a search and replace, because there is no algorithm that
> will get the quotes right, but I would like to be able to do the
> following:
>
> 1. Select the text that needs changing with the mouse
>
> 2. Hit a key and have the text changed to the \enquote version.
>
> I feel like this ought to be the sort of thing that TextMate excels
> at.  How should I do it?


Just playing around, not sure if I understand your case.  Starting  
with this sample text as in put, in a TM file:

`looks like this' dsa   'dsadad'
`looks like this'    dsadsad     `looks like this'

Search on patterh: `(.+?)'
Replace with pattern \enquote{$1}

Result:
\enquote{looks like this} dsa   'dsadad'
\enquote{looks like this}    dsadsad     \enquote{looks like this}

I made a Macro that works only on the selection, as you asked, but you  
can change it to work on the entire document if desired:

{
     action = replaceAll;
     findInProjectIgnoreCase = 1;
     findString = "`(.+?)'";
     ignoreCase = 1;
     regularExpression = 1;
     replaceAllScope = selection;
     replaceString = "\\enquote{$1}";
     wrapAround = 1;
}

What wold be more ideal, I think, is to take the cursor position, and  
grow a selection to the left and right until the selection hits a  
known list of characters on the left and right.  I am not sure how to  
alter the "select word", or "Select Enclosing Brackets", which I  
believe would be a good place to start in getting this to work as you  
want it.

Hope this helps.
-- 
Scott * If you contact me off list replace talklists@ with scott@ *