Re: Regex replace for numbers

[Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 8:41 AM, Robert Thorpe
<rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> wrote:

>> \([0-9]+\)\.\([0-9]*?\)0+   RET
>> \1.\2    RET
>
> That needs C-M-%, regexp-replace.  If I have a number like 456.0040 then
> it replaces the first two zeros giving 456.40, which is wrong.  It seems
> that shortest-match regexps aren't very useful here.  If I remove the ?
> in the regexp then it works, but it only removes one layer of zeros at a
> time, so e.g. 567.45000 becomes 567.4500.

So what you need to match is a string of digits, then a decimal point,
then a non-greedy string of digits, then a (possibly empty but greedy)
string of zeros, and finally an end of word.

\([0-9]+\.[0-9]*?\)0+\> replace with \1

Note that this won’t touch instances which have a letter immediately after it:

1234.5678000s

If you want that too, try this:

\([0-9]+\.[0-9]*?\)0+\([^0-9]|\') replace with \1\2