{"id":3822,"date":"2022-03-11T17:01:11","date_gmt":"2022-03-11T22:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/?p=3822"},"modified":"2022-03-11T18:36:32","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T23:36:32","slug":"fastscripts-3-1-streamlined-regular-expressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redsweater.com\/blog\/3822\/fastscripts-3-1-streamlined-regular-expressions","title":{"rendered":"FastScripts 3.1: Streamlined Regular Expressions"},"content":{"rendered":"

FastScripts 3.1 is now available on the FastScripts home page<\/a>, or by selecting \u201cCheck for Update\u201d from the FastScripts menu.<\/p>\n

This update introduces an expansion of FastScripts’s own built-in scripting additions, with three powerful new commands for searching, replacing, and splitting text with regular expressions.<\/p>\n

These can be used by any AppleScript on your Mac, whether you’re running the script from FastScripts or not. These new commands are also completely free of charge<\/strong>, so if you install and keep FastScripts running in the background, your scripts will always have access to these features.<\/p>\n

Previously it was cumbersome to use regular expressions in AppleScript, resulting in people commonly calling out to scripting languages with “do shell script”, invoking Cocoa directly via AppleScriptObjC interfaces, or installing third-party scripting libraries such as Shane Stanley’s wonderful RegExAndStuff<\/a> library.<\/p>\n

I want to thank John Gruber<\/a> for reviewing and helping with with the design of the scripting interface, which I like to think represents the “Mac-ification” of providing regular expression support to AppleScript.<\/p>\n

So how does it work? In your AppleScript, be sure to wrap whatever text processing commands you use with a “tell” block addressing FastScripts:<\/p>\n

\n

tell<\/b> <\/span>application<\/i><\/span> "FastScripts"<\/span><\/p>\n

— Your script here<\/span><\/p>\n

end<\/b> tell<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Your script can then use the search text<\/strong>, replace text<\/strong>, or split text<\/strong> commands to search or transform text as you see fit. Here are some simple examples:<\/p>\n

Searching Text<\/h3>\n

The\u00a0search text<\/strong> command can be used to perform complex regular expression searches, but that includes simple searches for plain text strings:<\/p>\n

\n

set<\/b> <\/span>woodstack<\/span> to<\/b> "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"<\/span><\/p>\n

set<\/b> <\/span>groups<\/span> to<\/b> <\/span>search text<\/b><\/span> woodstack<\/span> matching pattern<\/span> "wood"<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Results in the AppleScript record:<\/p>\n

\n

{{<\/span>offset<\/span>:9, <\/span>text<\/span>:"wood"}, {<\/span>text<\/span>:"wood", <\/span>offset<\/span>:22}, {<\/span>text<\/span>:"wood", <\/span>offset<\/span>:43}, {<\/span>offset<\/span>:65, <\/span>text<\/span>:"wood"}}<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Replacing Text<\/h3>\n

The\u00a0replace text<\/strong> command works very similarly. This time we introduce some actual regular expression syntax. Note that you have to double-backslash some terms to make AppleScript happy:<\/p>\n

\n

set<\/b> <\/span>woodstack<\/span> to<\/b> "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"<\/span><\/p>\n

set<\/b> <\/span>cheesestack<\/span> to<\/b> <\/span>replace text<\/b><\/span> woodstack<\/span> matching pattern<\/span> "(\\\\bw[^\\\\s]+?d)" <\/span>replacement pattern<\/span> "cheese"<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Results in:<\/p>\n

\n

"How much cheese cheese a cheesechuck chuck if a cheesechuck could chuck cheese?"<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Splitting Text<\/h3>\n

Finally, the\u00a0split text<\/strong> command is used to separate a string into parts based on a plain text delimiter\u00a0or\u00a0<\/em>a complex regular expression pattern. For simplicity, this example just demonstrates how to separate all the components of a string based on white space:<\/p>\n

\n

set<\/b> <\/span>woodstack<\/span> to<\/b> "How much   wood    would a woodchuck\u00a0 chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"<\/span><\/p>\n

set<\/b> <\/span>splitstack<\/span> to<\/b> <\/span>split text<\/b><\/span> woodstack<\/span> matching pattern<\/span> "\\\\s+"<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Results in:<\/p>\n

\n

{"How", "much", "wood", "would", "a", "woodchuck", "chuck", "if", "a", "woodchuck", "could", "chuck", "wood?"}<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Beyond Simplicity<\/h3>\n

These new commands also support advanced features including the ability to use regular expression matching groups, specify case insensitivity, etc. Open FastScripts’s own scripting dictionary in your favorite script editor and explore the items in the\u00a0FastScripts Text Processing <\/strong>suite. Starting with FastScripts 3.1, an easy way to do this is simply to select FastScripts<\/strong> -> Open FastScripts Scripting Dictionary<\/strong> from the FastScripts menu.<\/p>\n

Other Changes<\/h3>\n

Text processing commands are the “big deal” in this update, but there are a few smaller changes that may also be of interest! Here is the complete list of updates in this release:<\/p>\n