Nisus Writer Pro - Manual (Page 322)

302 Using PowerFind Finding and Replacing Text
Figure 330
A PowerFind metacharacter
PowerFind finds literal text exactly as it is entered. Literal text means characters that have no
special meaning on their own (that is, they are not “meta” “characters”). The PowerFind mode
considers all text to be literal; it will find exactly what you type.
An expression consists of one or more metacharacters, literal text, or any combination of
metacharacters and literal text used to define or describe what you want to find. Which is why we
say at the beginning of this section that “If you can describe it, you can find it, and if you can find
it, you can change it to anything else you can describe.”
A wild card is a metacharacter that assumes the identity of one or more characters in a search
expression. For example, the wild card in Figure 330 looks for any digit.
The PowerFind Find expression illustrated in Figure 331 first looks for an open parenthesis, then
the string of characters “part number” followed by a space and any sequence of one or more digits
then a close parenthesis.
Figure 331
A simple PowerFind expression
PowerFind example
Suppose you want to find all the capitalized words in your document. You can quickly create a
PowerFind expression that will find all words beginning with any capital letter in a single step—
regardless of how many letters are in the word or what the letters are. And if you want to be more
specific—say, finding all capitalized words except those beginning with P, you can easily convert
your PowerFind expression to a PowerFind Pro expression and make the needed adjustments. For
instructions on how to convert PowerFind expressions to PowerFind Pro expressions see page 305.
Using the “Find what” and “Replace with” menus
The Find what and Replace with menus present all the basic find and replace commands you
might need to combine to create your Find or Replace Expression. In addition they contain
submenus containing recently found and replaced expressions, as well as saved expressions, along
with the tool to save them.
▶
Choose the commands you need from the Find what Gear pop-up menu or the Replace with
Gear pop-up menu.
This puts the “metacharacters” that represent the expression in the Find what and Replace
with text edit boxes.