[news.eclipse.newcomer] Re: Advance Regex help

[DYD <dyd_666_81-eclipsenews@xxxxxxxx>]

Chris Velevitch wrote:
> How do I search for a pattern only if the pattern is before a specific 
> character eg '%'. For example:-
>
>      1. pattern % something
>      2. something % pattern
>
> I want to be able to match line 1 but not line 2.
>
> Any ideas?

For a reference, you can have a look at
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html

In your case, I suppose that this should suffice:
	pattern.*[%]
which matches the pattern followed by any number of chars terminated by 
'%' (you need brackets only if the terminator is a metacharacter).
This is not exactly what you where looking for (match the pattern ONLY 
IF...), but I think that shouldn't be a problem.

In particular, if you are using the regex for a replacement, you can 
simply define a capturing group by adding parentheses around the string 
you don't need and re-write it with $1:
   FIND
    pattern(.*[%])
   REPLACE WITH
    anotherpattern$1

HTH,
dyd