Bug 66208

Summary: EDITING backreference in Search must be written with backslash, backreference in Replace must be written with dollar sign
Product: LibreOffice Reporter: Mirosław Zalewski <miniopl>
Component: LibreOfficeAssignee: Not Assigned <libreoffice-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED NOTOURBUG    
Severity: normal    
Priority: medium    
Version: 4.0.4.2 release   
Hardware: Other   
OS: All   
Whiteboard:
Crash report or crash signature: Regression By:

Description Mirosław Zalewski 2013-06-26 13:45:18 UTC 
New regex engine is great, but backreferences in Search field must be written with backslash (\1, \2 etc.), while backreferences in Replace field must be written with dollar sign ($1, $2 etc.).

This is inconsistent and brings confusion to user.

To see what I mean:

1. Create new Writer document. Write "test test"
2. Open search and replace dialog, check "Regular expression"
3. In Search enter:
\b(\w+)\b
in replace:
$1ing
press "Replace all".
You should get "testing testing"
4. In Search enter:
\b(\w+)\b\s*$1
in replace
$1
press "Replace all"
Error will occur that match could not be found.
5. In Search enter
\b(\w+)\b\s*\1
in replace
$1
press "Replace all"
duplicated string will be deleted.

tested under LO 4.0.4, Debian testing amd64.
Comment 1 Mirosław Zalewski 2013-07-07 18:50:10 UTC 
After reading through ICU regex list[0] again, carefully, I now know that this is intended.

I still think that this is confusing and should be changed, but this is pretty much ICU design decision, so pretty much NOTOURBUG.


[0] http://userguide.icu-project.org/strings/regexp