Bug 108256 - EDITING: find/replace regular expressions: \n has 2 meanings, it shouldn't
Summary: EDITING: find/replace regular expressions: \n has 2 meanings, it shouldn't
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
5.1.6.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
: 91033 112575 138752 153311 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: 38261 Find&Replace-Regex
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Reported: 2017-05-31 04:26 UTC by akerblom
Modified: 2024-03-15 12:14 UTC (History)
10 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:

Attachments
findReplace.odt: sample document showing two situations LO can't handle (13.91 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2018-02-17 10:38 UTC, Justin L 		Details
2020-05-27 editing and formatting poetry -- yet another use case (33.33 KB, image/png)
2020-05-27 13:37 UTC, thatho 		Details
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Description akerblom 2017-05-31 04:26:01 UTC 
In find/replace, when the "regular expressions" options box is checked, the product intentionally has "\n" mean one thing in the search box, and a different thing in the replace box:  

From the help file:
"
\n in the Search for text box stands for a line break that was inserted with the Shift+Enter key combination.
\n in the Replace with text box stands for a paragraph break that can be entered with the Enter or Return key.
"

This means that I can never search for a paragraph break, and I can never replace anything with a line break. 

As these are two different characters, they should really be represented by different expressions in the find/replace feature so that users have the flexibility to find on either one, and replace with either one.
Comment 1 Dieter 2017-06-01 13:03:36 UTC 
I can understand your problem, but for me it is only a theoretical problem. I can't think of a situation, where I want to search for a paragraph break or want to replace something with a line break. Can you give one or two examples?
Comment 2 akerblom 2017-06-01 16:00:49 UTC 
2 have occurred just in my household:

1- my daughter wanted to cut and paste song lyrics into a story she was writing, but in paragraph form.  So she needed to at the end of every line hand delete the paragraph break and replace it with a space.  It was a very long song.

2- I have hundreds/thousands of old emails from back when they were sent only in plain text format.  When you would reply, the paragraphs would be word-wrapped at 76 characters (or so) and on each new line a "> " would be prepended.  We'd format new paragraphs by having 2 carriage returns.  Preserving old emails into a document requires replacing all those single carriage returns with spaces and the double carriage returns with single carriage returns.  A lot of reformatting.

Basically - this is something you run into with reformatting text obtained from elsewhere.  Also, it would be helpful for bringing text from or to a spreadsheet format.

Clearly it is not a theoretical problem. In fact, a quick google search finds complaints about this going back 5-6 years, with some painful workarounds. But really this should just be in the already available find/replace feature.  Noone should have to cut and paste thier LibreWriter doc into MSWord to be able to replace on <CR>.
Comment 3 Dieter 2017-06-01 16:22:26 UTC 
Thank you for the explanations and examples. I agree, that there are some situations, where it might be useful. Set to NEW.
Comment 4 Daniel Grigoras 2017-09-22 13:40:35 UTC Comment hidden (no-value)
Comment 5 V Stuart Foote 2017-09-22 22:00:01 UTC Comment hidden (no-value)
Comment 6 Justin L 2018-02-17 10:38:30 UTC 
Created attachment 139959 [details]
findReplace.odt: sample document showing two situations LO can't handle

I think this document demonstrates the two situations described in comment 2 and also covers the "\nTextToReplace" concept from comment 4 which in MSWord search syntax would be "^pTextToReplace".

The key idea here is to do these things as single searches (preferably via a replace all). Otherwise the user has to make multiple "replace/next" passes through the document to accomplish each task.
Comment 7 Justin L 2018-02-17 10:59:38 UTC 
*** Bug 91033 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 8 Justin L 2018-02-17 11:13:22 UTC 
*** Bug 112575 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 9 thatho 2020-05-27 13:37:09 UTC 
Created attachment 161336 [details]
2020-05-27 editing and formatting poetry -- yet another use case

Replacing line breaks for paragraph breaks (and to apply any new formatting optionally) requires much hand work.
Comment 10 Justin L 2020-12-24 17:09:00 UTC 
*** Bug 138752 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 LyricTalk 2022-05-30 03:46:43 UTC Comment hidden (spam)
Comment 12 LyricTalk 2022-05-30 14:24:46 UTC Comment hidden (spam)
Comment 13 LyricTalk 2022-06-11 17:51:40 UTC Comment hidden (spam)
Comment 14 V Stuart Foote 2023-02-02 03:10:07 UTC 
*** Bug 153311 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 15 LyricTalk 2023-05-31 19:12:20 UTC Comment hidden (spam)
Comment 16 Justin L 2024-03-15 12:14:25 UTC 
(In reply to akerblom from comment #0)
> This means that I can never search for a paragraph break
Not true. LO regex help says, "$ on its own matches the end of a paragraph. This way it is possible to search and replace paragraph breaks." This follows normal regex behaviour.

However, it is true that you could not get rid of the email quoted parts with a search for '$>', but that is expected in regex's, which (generally) only operate on one line/paragraph.