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Using regular expressions (REGEX) with EasyCatalog data cleansing
Regular expressions provide an extremely flexible and advanced method for cleaning and rearranging source data into a format more suitable for publishing within a catalog.
Regular expression will involve adding or altering the start or end of a field, replacing or reformatting specific values or targeting one or more parts of a field. Regular expressions can be very handy when a field needs to be reformatted, creating an inline heading in bold, or adding/tidying bullets.
Regular expressions used within EasyCatalog are very similar to regular expressions used within other operating systems / programming languages (e.g. Python, Perl, C++, PHP).
A notable exception is that InDesign uses the ^ character as a signifier for its own extended characters (e.g. ^p = paragraph; ^t = tab). To target the start of a string you need to use two carets, i.e. ^^.
Common regular expressions
Common regular expressions target the start or end of a field, or replace or reformat part of the field.
| Details | Syntax | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ^^ | Find at start of field | REGEX:^^Apple=Banana; | Replaces Apple at start of field with Banana |
| $ | Find at end of field | REGEX:apple.$=banana.; | Replaces apple. at end of field with banana. |
| [abc] | A single character | REGEX:[c]=C; | Replaces cat with Cat. |
| [^abc] | A character except | REGEX:[^c]=x; | Replaces cat with cxx. |
| . | Any single character | REGEX:.=grape; | |
| ^x$ | Find whole field | REGEX:^^0.00$; | Replaces 0.00 with nothing (Values such as 10.00, 12.34 will remain untouched) |
| /1 | Find first part of field |
Complex regular expression samples
Advanced regular expression statements and operations containing multiple expressions may be used to dramatically transform underlying data.
| Regular expression(s) | Details | Syntax | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| ^^ $ |
Find at start of field Find at end of field |
REGEX:^^=<sup>$</sup>; .=<sup>; REGEX:$=</sup>; |
Adds superscript “$” to start of field, removes “.” and converts cents to superscript, e.g. 12.34 changes to $1234. |
Regular expression builder
Web-based regular expression builders provides valuable insights into targeting regular expressions for parts of your chosen string, for example: