SID-01911: Global Replace Plugin Search for TWiki Link Code

Status:	Answered	TWiki version:		Perl version:	5.10.1
Category:	GlobalReplacePlugin	Server OS:	Turnkey Linux 12.1	Last update:	11 years ago

In trying to search for TWiki link code (such as [[) and replace it with HTML link code (such as <a href="), Global Replace does not behave as for other searches / replaces.

With the following specified: Topic Search String: ?.* (to search all topics in the web) Replace Search String: \[[ (to locate all instances of "[[" in each searched topic)

The following standout odd results occur: 1. Only the first instance of "[[" in each topic is returned; none of the other instances is returned. (For my searches, these are WebHome links.)

2. Instead of returning "[[" matches, "[[WebHome" instances are returned.

3. The returned "[[WebHome" match is actually duplicated. Which does NOT occur in the topic. The core of a typical returned topic is as below: Text Found: [[WebHome[[WebHome (Where the first is red-texted for replacement.) Replace With: <a href="[[WebHome

Does anyone know the reason for this?

Thanks,

-- Patrick Townsend-Wells - 2014-04-18

Discussion and Answer

The [ is a special character that starts a character set. You need to escape special characters if you want to scan literally. So, search for \[\[. If you want to scan for the full link, write \[\[(.*?)\]\], and in the replace part use $1 to get the topic name.

See regular expression presentation at TWikiPresentation2013x03x07

-- Peter Thoeny - 2014-04-20

Fantastic Peter.

Thanks,

The Odd One

-- Patrick Townsend-Wells - 2014-04-21

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