DataFlex Studio Search regex tips

Tips from Marco

The DataFlex Studio has the possibility to use regular expressions in the Find dialog.

This opens the possibility to search for very specific things.

Find <xx> Table

Useful is

find .. Customer

where the . is any character, so eq gt ge etc.

If you also have and would like to find any number of spaces then you can extend it by \s for a space character followed by one or more with a +

find\s+..\s+customer

Looking for a function that has a number as the parameter

function .* number .* returns

Basically, the . is any character and the * is any occurrence of the previous character. So it is matching:

"function"
space
any characters
"number"
space
any characters
space
"returns" 

Find old subroutines

^\w+:

^ is start at character 1 on the line
\w is a word character
+ is one of more of the previous
: is exactly that, a ':'

So this finds

Start:
Start_A:
Start_5:

But not if there is a space before the word or a space between the word character and the :