Regular expressions are best described as a text pattern matching system. If you can identify any pattern in
your text, you can manipulate it with regular expressions. What kind of pattern? Imagine you have a
spreadsheet-like table with lots of numbers, showing both dollars and cents, mixed with explanatory text.
With regular expressions, you can match the pattern formed by the dollar sign and the decimal point and
reformat the entire table, turning all the figures deep blue with a new font??”all in one Find and Replace
operation.
If you??™re into Unix, you recognize regular expressions as being very close to the grep utility??”
grep, by the way, stands for Get Regular Expressions and Print. The Find and Replace feature in
BBEdit, available only on a Macintosh, also features a grep-like syntax.
You can apply regular expressions to any of the types of Find and Replace operations previously discussed by
just clicking the Use Regular Expressions checkbox. Note that when you select Use Regular Expressions, the
Ignore Whitespace Differences option is deselected. This is because the two options are mutually exclusive.
The most basic regular expression is the text itself. If you enable the feature and then enter th in the Search
text field, Dreamweaver locates every example of th in the text and/or source.
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