Replacements on hex addresses

[PMatos]

Hi,

I have on my left addresses that consist of 8 hexadecimal digits. On the right, addresses that have '0x' followed by 8 hexadecimal digits (usually different from those in the left.

I want these blocks of addresses to be considered unimportant changes.

I tried the replacement:
Left: [0-9A-F][0-9A-F][0-9A-F][0-9A-F][0-9A-F][0-9A-F][0-9A-F][0-9A-F]
Right: 0x[0-9a-f][0-9a-f][0-9a-f][0-9a-f][0-9a-f][0-9a-f][0-9a-f][0-9a-f]

However, this didn't work. What's the way to do this?

Cheers,
PM

[Aaron]

Hello,

This forum post may have some information useful for you:
http://www.scootersoftware.com/vbull...ead.php?t=4546

Text Replacements cannot match on a mask on the "right"/destination side. For your replacement to work, the two 8 digit sets would need to match. Otherwise, you may want to define two different Unimportant Grammars:
http://www.scootersoftware.com/suppo..._unimportantv3

How does that work for you?

[Michael Bulgrien]

Better to create a single unimportant case-insensitive grammar with the leading "0x" defined as optional so that the detected grammar element on both sides is the same. Here is a grammar definition that might work for you:

(?:0x){0,1}[0-9a-f]{8}

(?: ) Groups characters without creating a back reference. The grouped text is "0x"
{0,1} Repeats prior grouped characters 0 to 1 times
[0-9a-f] Creates a character class for a hexidecimal digit
{8} Repeats prior class 8 times

[Michael Bulgrien]

Scooter - I just tried the regex expression I provided above.
Although it works fine in a regex find/replace operation, it errors when used in a grammar definition: "Invalid regular expression: Character expected at position 2"

Since this is not an invalid regular expression, I am wondering why it is not allowed in a grammar definition?

PMatos - You'll have to try this instead:

(0x){0,1}[0-9a-f]{8}

It works the same way... the only difference is that it creates an unnecessary back reference to the 0x characters if they are present.

[Zoë]

The regular expression engine used in the comparison and syntax highlighting only supports a limited subset of the full regular expression syntax. Back references are one of the things it doesn't support, so ?: isn't supported either. Erik handled that work, so I don't know the specifics, but we can't use PCRE like we are in the Find dialog.

[Michael Bulgrien]

Thanks Craig. It sounds like (Ox) in a grammar rule is the same as (?:Ox) in PCRE. That should work fine, then.

[PMatos]

Thank you all for your help. With your tips I got it working just as I wanted.

Cheers,

PM