Re: capitalize string using regular expressions

[Pascal Bourguignon <spam@thalassa.informatimago.com>]

"colin smith" <zxcv4856@hotmail.com> writes:

> Hi Everyone,
> 
>     Does anyone know how I can replace all occurences of  any strings that
> end with ".txt" (lets say "ghjkl.txt" and "xyz.txt") with their uppercase
> equivalents(ie. "GHJKL.txt" and "XYZ.txt").  There must be some way of doing
> this using regular expressions. I've looked extensively through the emacs
> help, but havent been able to figure it out.

Your problem  is slightly ill-defined.   What are those  "any strings"
you're speaking about?  Imagine a buffer containing:

toto.txt titi.txt tutu.txt
tata.txt

Do you want:

TOTO.TXT TITI.TXT TUTU.txt
TATA.txt

or do you want:

TOTO.txt TITI.txt TUTU.txt
TATA.txt

What about:

txt.txt.txt.txt
tu\
tu.txt

?

(goto-char (point-min))
(let ((case-fold-search nil))
    (while (re-search-forward "\\(.+\\)\\(\\.txt\\)" nil t)
        (let ((before (match-string 1)))
          (delete-region (match-beginning 1) (match-end 1))
          (goto-char (match-beginning 1))
          (insert before))))

You can run it on a given buffer with: M-x eval-expression RET
and pasting the expression and RET, or you can make a command:

(defun upcase-before-.txt (start end)
  (interactive "r")
  (goto-char start)
  (let ((case-fold-search nil))
    (while (re-search-forward "\\(.+\\)\\(\\.txt\\)" end t)
      ;; note implicit         ^ beginning and     ^ end of anything 
      ;; on the same line! ("." does match anything but a new line).
      ;; Was it what you meant?
      (let ((before (upcase (match-string 1))))
        (delete-region (match-beginning 1) (match-end 1))
        (goto-char (match-beginning 1))
        (insert before)))))

and select a region and M-x upcase-before-.txt RET




If you mean individual strings, what do you mean by "all occurrences"?

(show
(mapcar (lambda (any-string)
          (let ((case-fold-search nil))
             (if (string-match "^\\(.*\\)\\.txt$" any-string)
              ;; note explicit  ^ begin and    $ end of string !
                 (concat (upcase (match-string 1 any-string)) ".txt")
                 any-string)))
        '("toto.txt" "titi" "tata.txt" "tutu.TXT"
          "txt.txt.txt" "toto.txt tutu.txt"))
)
==> ("TOTO.txt" "titi" "TATA.txt" "tutu.TXT" "TXT.TXT.txt" "TOTO.TXT TUTU.txt")


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