My current knowledge of regex/GREP is almost nil, and I thought it would be useful to at least learn a little. I came across the following example on Wikipedia, but I don’t understand how the pattern applies to the first item, as “a” isn’t specifically declared. I’d appreciate any insight as to why it isn’t needed. TIA
H(ä|ae?)ndel will find “Handel”, “Händel”, and “Haendel”
Yes, it is. The question mark after the e makes the e optional (which means that both “a” and “ae” are matched).
Hi, Bruce. I understand the question mark consideration for the 2nd and 3rd strings, but the character that is specified is not “a”, it’s umlaut “a”.
ae? matches a or ae, i.e. a with or without the e
Thanks. My error was that I read it to mean that “ä” & “ae,” were strings to be considered, and I was expecting each item as a separate element, like: H(a|ä|ae?)ndel
That would have worked, it’s just redundant.