GREP to find a sequence of characters without a closing apostrophe

Question

I'm trying to find long quotes in the text that I'm editing so that I can apply a different style to them. I've tried this GREP:

~[.{230}(?!.~])

What I need is for the GREP to find any 230 characters preceded by a left/opening quote mark, not including any 230-character sequence including a character followed by a right/clsoing quote mark. This should then eliminate quotes of less than 230 characters from the search. My GREP finds the correct length sequence but doesn't exclude those sequences which include a right quote mark.

So I want to find this, which my GREP does:

But not this, which my GREP also finds:

Because it has a closing quote in it and is therefore what I'm classing as a short quote.

Any ideas? TIA

Try it like this `~[^~]{1,230}` https://regex101.com/r/vuJBaL/1 Or with `grep -oP` and a lookahead `~[^~]{1,230}(?=~)` https://regex101.com/r/anqlNa/1 — The fourth bird, May 21 '21 at 16:37
@Thefourthbird Thanks, but doesn't seem to work. I'm beginning to think it's not possible to use GREP to find a sequence of 230 characters preceded by an opening apostrophe but not including a closing apostrophe — Daniel James Smith, May 21 '21 at 16:47
Quotation mark, like this `‘[^‘’]{1,230}(?=’)` https://regex101.com/r/zdcqh2/1 — The fourth bird, May 21 '21 at 16:49
@Thefourthbird Okay, that does the opposite, so almost there. It finds all quotes under 230 characters — Daniel James Smith, May 21 '21 at 16:57
If you want 230 or more characters `‘[^‘’]{230,}(?=’)` https://regex101.com/r/XREbXD/1 — The fourth bird, May 21 '21 at 16:59

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 21 '21 at 17:05

You can match an opening ‘ followed by 230 or more occurrences of any character except an opening or closing quotation mark.

To not match the closing quotation mark, you can assert it using a positive lookahead.

‘[^‘’]{230,}(?=’)

‘ Match ‘
[^‘’]{230,} Repeat 230+ times any char except ‘ or ’ using a negated character class
(?=’) Positive lookahead, assert ’ directly to the right

See a regex demo.

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 21 '21 at 17:35

1

Thanks @Thefourthbird.

So what I needed was:

‘[^’]{230,}

to search for an opening apostrophe ‘ followed by anything but a closing apostrophe [^’] of 230 characters or more {230,}

Strangely, if you use InDesign's code for left ~[ and right ]~ apostrophe it doesn't work!

edited May 21 '21 at 17:35

The fourth bird

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answered May 21 '21 at 17:18

Daniel James Smith

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Just realised it doesn't work if there is a possessive apostrophe in the quote. i.e. it will see 'Charles's poodles' as the quote prematurely ending after 'Charles'. I don't suppose you can say unless there is a comma/full stop/exclamation point/question mark followed by an apostrophe? I tried: ‘[^.’|,’|?’|!’]{230,} – Daniel James Smith May 21 '21 at 17:49

GREP to find a sequence of characters without a closing apostrophe

2 Answers2