Regular expressions
The regular expressions that you can use in the search and replace dialogs and in places like the Feature attributes, the Primary index of an Item node or in checks all use standard Java regexp syntax.
8.0+ Before QF-Test version 3.1 the default was the GNU regexp package. After that it was available as an option. In QF-Test 8.0 the GNU Regexp package was removed from QF-Test.
Detailed regexp documentation with links to further information and even a whole book
about regular expressions are provided in the Java documentation for the class
java.util.regex.Pattern at http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html.
It's also worth to have a look at the Wikipedia article
about regular expressions.
Following is a short summary of the basics:
- A '.' stands for any one character except line breaks. With the new Java regexps you can start your regexp with the embedded flag '(?s)' to treat multi-line text like a single line so '.' will match everything.
- Character in between '[' and ']' match any one of these characters.
- A '?' says the preceding element is optional, i.e. it may appear 0 or 1 times.
- '+' means at least one of the preceding element.
- '*' means 0 or more of the preceding element.
-
A group is created with '(' and ')'. A '?', '+' or '*' after the
closing brace refers to the whole group. All groups in a regexp
are numbered in the order of their opening brace. The first group
has the number 1, 0 stands for the whole regexp. For search and
replace,
$nin the replacement string expands to the part of the original value matched by the nth group. Example: To change the extension of file names starting with/tmp/from.footo.bar, search for(/tmp/.*)\.fooand replace with$1.bar. - A '|' separates alternatives in a group.
- '\' quotes to suppress the special meaning of the following character or introduces special characters, e.g. '\n' for LineFeed (a line break), '\r' for CarriageReturn (not needed for QF-Test, see section 49.4) or '\t' for Tab.
Examples:
-
.*describes a sequence of arbitrary characters, which is optional. -
.+describes a sequence of arbitrary characters, but there must be at least one character, i.e. some mandatory characters. -
[0-9]describes one arbitrary cipher. -
[0-9]+describes a sequence of arbitrary ciphers, but there must be at least one cipher. -
[0-9]{1,3}describes a sequence of arbitrary ciphers, but there must be at least one cipher and at maximum three ciphers. -
To match any text that contains the word 'tree' use
'.*tree.*'. -
To match arbitrary text possibly including line breaks:
'(?s).*' -
To replace 'tree' in arbitrary text with 'node' use
'(.*)tree(.*)'to search and$1node$2to replace. In the replace dialog simply replacetreewithnodeand disable the "Match whole string" check box to achieve the same effect. -
To search for 'name' or 'names':
'names?' -
To search for 'tree' or 'node':
'(tree|node)' - An arbitrary word consisting of letters and numbers: [0-9a-zA-Z]+
- ...
QF-Test allows you to use the context menu item »Escape text for regular expressions« on all attributes
which allow regular expressions in order to escape special
characters of regular expressions correctly with '\'.
When it is not possible to use that functionality, for example
with variables, you can use the special syntax
${quoteregexp:$(myVariable)}
to excape special characaters in the variable value,
see Special groups.